274 Reviews — Sir W. Datvson — 



The writers of the paper do not seem to notice that in the 

 St. Pierre specimens the fine canals and tubuli are often filled 

 with transparent dolomite, difficult to perceive without very good 

 preparations and properly managed light. In roughly prepared 

 specimens, and without careful attention to illumination, these 

 delicate structures are often quite invisible. I have sections 

 properly prepared which show the finest and most complicated 

 tubulation in a manner equal to anything I have seen in any fossil 

 Foraminifera from more recent formations, while other slices cut 

 from the same specimen, but possibly slightly heated or subjected 

 to mechanical jars in polishing, show little except a curdled appear- 

 ance of the serpentine and a multitude of cleavage-planes in the 

 calcite. In like manner in preparing decalcified specimens, a little 

 heat or an acid too strong or not quite pure may remove all the 

 dolomitic casts of tubuli, and may erode those of serpentine. From 

 causes of this kind I fear many who have pronounced very decided 

 opinions on Eozoon have not actually seen perfect examples of its 

 structure. 



While, therefore, I must agree with the writers of the paper that 

 their specimens from Somma belong to the category of those banded 

 structures found in concretions and geodes, and at the lines of contact 

 of igneous and aqueous rocks, with which those who have advocated 

 the organic origin of Eozoon are not unfamiliar, and which they 

 have all along been solicitous to distinguish from it, I must 

 emphatically deny that they resemble, either in composition, mode 

 of occurrence, or form and structure, the Laurentian Eozoon of 

 Canada. 



la E 'V IIB "W S. 



I. — Synopsis of the Air-breathing Animals of the Paleozoic 

 [EocKs] IN Canada, up to 1894. By Sir William Dawson, 

 C.M.a, LL.D., F.R.S. Pages 71-88, from the Transact. Eoy. 

 Soc, Canada, Section IV, 1894. 



TITTLE more than fifty years ago very few relics of any aii'- 

 J breathing animals were known to exist in strata of Paleeozoic 

 age. Since then Canada, especially the Eastern Province of the 

 Dominion, has yielded numerous interesting examples of such 

 animals, high in grade above the common kinds of fossil creatures 

 of protozoan, coelenterate, and molluscan families. Logan's dis- 

 covery, in 1841, of fossil Batrachian footsteps in the Lower Coal- 

 measures at Horton Bluff, in Nova Scotia, was the first indication 

 of the existence of air-breathing vertebrates in the Carboniferous 

 rocks (Proceed. Geol. Soc. London, vol. iii, 1842, p. 712). In 1844 

 Dr. King announced the discovery of foot-prints in the Carboniferous 

 of Pennsylvania ; and Von Decken the finding of skeletons of 

 Batrachians in the coal-field of Saarbruck. The first discovery of 

 the osseous remains of any Palaeozoic land vertebrate in America 

 was that of Baphetes planiceps, found by Sir W. Dawson in the 

 Pictou coal-field in 1850 (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. x, 1856, 



