r^sum4 and general discussion. 529 



say that he was disposed to consider these specimens "as fossils." la 

 18G-i, Dr. Dawson, in his Ad(h-ess before the Natural History Society 

 of Montreal, announced that he had "arrived at the conclusion that 

 they [the fossils in question] are of animal nature, and belong to the 

 very humblest type of animal existence known, that of the lihizopods." 

 He adds, that "the discovery of this remarkable fossil, to be known as 

 the Eozo'On Canadense^ will be one of the brightest gems in the scientific 

 crown of the Geological Survey of Canada." * 



This preliminary announcement was followed by several elaborate 

 papers, by Messrs. Logan, Dawson, and Hunt, published in the Quar- 

 terly Journal of the Geological Society, as well as others by Dr. W. B. 

 Carpenter, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, in which 

 it was claimed that the fossil in question was a Foraminifer ; or, to use 

 Dr. Carpenter's exact words, " that the Eozoon finds its proper place in 

 the Foraminiferal series, I conceive to be conclusively proved by its 

 accordance with the great types of that series in all the essential char- 

 acters of organization, — namely, the structure of the shell forming the 

 proper wall of the chambers, in which it agrees precisely with Num- 

 mulina and its allies ; the presence of an ' intermediate skeleton," and 

 an elaborate 'canal-system,' the disposition of which reminds us most 

 oi Calcarina ; a mode of communication of the chambers when they 

 are most completely separated, which has its exact parallel in Cyclo- 

 dypeus ; and an ordinary want of completeness of separation between 

 the chambers, corresponding with that which is characteristic of Car- 

 penter ia." t 



From this time forward the Eozoon began to be an important matter. 

 The authority of Dr. Carpenter, at first, bore down all opposition ; and, 

 with few exceptions, geologists and pahieontologists gave this gigantic 

 Foraminifer a place as the " earliest known representative on our planet 

 of those wondrous powers of animal life which culminate and unite 

 themselves with the spirit-world in man himself." J 



Gradually, however, there came a reaction from the shock of this 

 stupendous discovery, which first manifested itself in a denial, on the 

 part of Professor Harkness (1865), of the organic nature of the Eozoon. 

 This was followed in the succeeding year by an elaborate paper by 

 Messrs. King and Rowney, in which they maintained that the Eozoon 

 Canademe must be relegated to the inorganic kingdom. From this 



* Canadian Naturalist, 1864, p. 220 ; Am. Jour. Sci., (2), X.XXVII. 232. 

 t Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of Loudon, XXL 64. 



* D;iwson, " The Dawu of Life," p. 1. 

 VOL. VII. — NO. 11. 34 



