40 Erioin Hincldey Barbour 



with hardened balsam. Even then the loose grains of fine 

 sand constantly break in grinding, and often injure or destroy 

 the section before it is as thin as this rather opaque substance 

 must needs be. However, in the poorest and most opaque 

 sections the cellular structure is unmistakable, while in the 

 better sections it is clearly and sharply defined. It seems 

 worthy of mention that out of a few more than one hundred 

 sections which have already been ground, scarcely one failed 

 to show the familiar cellular structure. Any failure in this is 

 a failure in the preparation of the object. Every form of the 

 whole Daemonelix series,' from the simple fibre to the complex 

 "Twisters," shows simple tissue under the glass. (See Plates 

 XVI, XVIL, XVIII.) 



This fact the author seizes upon as all but absolute evidence 

 of their organic origin. In longitudinal sections, average cells 

 vary from thirty-five to fifty micromillimeters; in cross section 

 they measure about ten micromillimeters. 



THE BURROW THEORY. 



No one who has seen Daemonelix pronounces its origin 

 as other than organic, although it has been the prevailing con- 

 ception that it is mechanically formed. That it is not a bur- 

 row of some Pliocene rodent the author has already tried to 

 show.' 



This much seems certain, that the Daemonelix fibres, cakes, 

 balls, and cigars, could not have been burrows by any possible 

 stretch of the imagination. Certainly the others were not. 

 The fact that the deposit in which they occur is of distinctly 

 aqueous origin throughout — and no gopher, ancient or modern, 

 could have burrowed in water — and the fact that the structure 

 of all alike is vegetable, seem sufficient proof without rehears- 

 ing the other arguments. 



The finding of a rodent skeleton within the "rhizome" of 



120 



