86 Reviews—Dr. Otto Kahn’s Die Urzelle, ete. 
with the Eozoon question, on which he had previously expressed 
views opposed to its organic origin: his present opinion is that “the 
limestone of the Laurentian Gneiss of Canada, the oldest sedimentary 
beds of our Earth, contains a plant creation belonging to the family 
of the Algw.” He henceforward speaks of it as Hophyllum, and 
wonders that any one could have looked at Dr. Dawson’s nature- 
printed figure “ without thinking at once of a plant.” He adds on 
his plates several figures, which he imagines prove the canal-system 
to be plants, while the sarcode chambers are plant-cells. Our 
readers, we fear, will need some key to these grotesque sketches, for 
from beginning to end we cannot see the faintest resemblance to any- 
thing in the vegetable kingdom, and certainly they do not help us — 
to appreciate the wonderful position taken up in the text. 
However, Hophyllum canadense is said to be allied to Fucus, to 
have a cup-shaped basal cell, which gives off buds or brood-cells. 
In a somewhat desultory sort of way the microscopic so-called Algze 
are treated to the following names,—Kampyloklen, Leucophyllum, — 
of which the magnified views look like obscure dendrites, but the 
description of them is highly curious. Pseudozoon is a name now 
given to Carpenter’s canal-system, which ranks as a separate plant. 
Chairokerdos, magnified 150 diameters, looks like a poor sort of 
dendrite, but much is made of it in the description ; it is said to show 
spores, etc. Poterion, Margarodes, Lichnon, Salpine, Kilikodendron, 
Pleurophyllum, Phiala, Theochara, Linophyton, are made known to us 
by sketches without verbal descriptions—indeed, they seem inde- 
scribable ; we almost fancy our author has been drawing the motes 
in his eye. In summing up results the earliest plant is described as 
a cell—“ one cell fixes itself, the next grows upwards . . . . some- 
times several cells are set one on the other . . . . next from these 
cells, generally at the border .... spring brood-cells (buds) in 
form of a leaf or cup; the cells divide—so the stem arises. .... 
As far as the forms of the cell are concerned, they are inexhaustibly 
different.” We might add that they seem to vary as much in size, 
and we confess to a sort of curiosity to know the author’s idea of a 
cell. Dr. Carpenter’s nummuline layer is described as chrysolite 
fibres arranged round the surface of the brood-cells ; and our author 
now fancies that all who worked at Hozoon and did not recognize 
this—himself included— must have been stricken with blindness; 
_+ + + every one who now examines the serpentine of the EHophyllum 
limestone . . . . where the plants are patent to the naked eye... . 
will strike his forehead and exclaim, How was it possible to miss 
seeing that!” 
Having settled the oldest plant, we are introduced to the earliest 
animal, Titanus Bismarki, said to be something like a Serpula, but 
its tube to consist of numberless contractile rings. If we might | 
hazard a guess, the author had a fragment of Helminth under his 
microscope here, but it is described as possibly “the forerunner. of 
Trilobites.” 
This seems to finish what, from internal evidence, we may call the 
main object of the book; the remainder is rather discursive, both in 
