11 



and the same specimen sent to Dr. Ruedemann, was a fossil 

 alga, probably a Cryptozoon, which deserved a new specific 

 name. In our further correspondence, we had almost agreed on 

 such a name, as Cryptozoon kittatinyense, or concentricum. Re- 

 ferring to Dr. Ruedemann's conclusion that it was a mud-ball, 

 Dr. Howe said : 



"It is hard for me to believe that a thing of this sort is not 

 organic. However, I do not like to describe things as fossil algae 

 unless they show some microscopic cell structure, which your 

 thing, I judge, does not do. If you want to go ahead and give the 

 thing a name it won't be any worse than what the distinguished 

 Dr. Walcott did in the case of his so-called Pre-Cambrian algae. 

 And he was director of the United States Geological Survey, 

 Secreary of the Smithsonian Institution, and president of the 

 National Academy of Sciences! So you would have a very emi- 

 nent precedent. Your 'new species' would certainly be as good 

 as his Newlandia concentrica." 



Dr. Howe informed me that Professor A. C. Seward, Paleo- 

 botanist of Cambridge University, who is sceptical as to the 

 organic nature of Cryptozoon, and thinks such concentric rings 

 may be due to purely physical precipitation of minerals, was 

 soon to lecture in New York. So when Dr. Seward appeared be- 

 fore the Torrey Botanical Club, and the department of botany 

 of Columbia University in a lecture at Columbia not long after 

 I put my problem to him. He was much interested, and after 

 his return to England, wrote me for more photographs and ac- 

 tual specimens, which I sent him. He wrote: "I realize that the 

 explanation of the curious structures known as Cryptozoon is 

 one of the most difficult problems and that makes it all the more 

 interesting to tackle." 



I also applied to Professor Charles P. Berkey, head of the 

 department of geology and mineralogy at Columbia University, 

 for his views. Anderson and I had made further visits to the re- 

 gion where we first found the circles, and scoured the woods and 

 ledges for a mile north and northeast of the original boulder, 

 on the supposition that it had been transported by the ice of 

 the continental glacier and that we might find its source in some 

 ledge, not far off. We did not find such a ledge, but we did find 

 at least twenty other glacial fragments, of the same quartzite 

 in a fan-shaped area, northeast of Tock's Swamp from a few 



