1866.] CAPvPENTER EOZOON CANADEN-SE. 227 



be supposed to have been hollowed out, so as to give to the siliceous 

 lamina exactly the same kind of tuberculation on its under surface, 

 as it is supposed on the mineral hypothesis to acquire on its up'per 

 by agencies inherent in itself? or if it be supposed that the calcare- 

 ous and siliceous salts were in solution in the same liquid, and that 

 the peculiar arrangement in question was due to their separation in 

 the act of solidification, the siliceous taking on the form of botryoidal 

 concretions, and the calcareous filling up the spaces between these, 

 the objectors may be challenged to bring forward any example of 

 an undoubted mineral produced by inorganic agencies which shows 

 anything like the structural regularity in the size and disposition of 

 its component parts that is presented by characteristic specimens of 

 the Canadian Eozoon^. 



In addition to the localities in which it has been already announced 

 that the Eozoic characters have been detected in Serpentine Lime- 

 stone, I may record three as of special interest as indicating the 

 prevalence of the same features in that fundamental Gneissic for- 

 mation of Central Europe, which the labours of Sir Roderick Mur- 

 chison have shown to be the equivalent of the Canadian Laurentians. 

 Three months ago I received from Dr. Eritsch, of Prague, through 

 Mr. H. B. Brady, of Newcastle, a specimen of Ophicalcite from 

 Cesha Lipa in Bohemia, which gave on decalcification a form of 

 Eozoon closely resembling that exhibited by the "Irish Green." Not 

 long afterwards I received from Dr. Hochstetter a specimen from the 

 fundamental gneissic rocks of the neighbourhood of Moldau, which 

 exhibited the same characters. And Sir Charles Lyell has recently 

 placed in my hands a specimen of Serpentinous Limestone sent him 

 by Dr. Giimbel, the Director of the Government Survey of Bavaria, 

 in which I have found what appears to me distinct evidence of Eozoic 

 structure, although it has been greatly altered by subsequent meta- 

 morphism. 



* This difficulty has not been met, so far as I can understand, by any of the 

 cases adduced as parallel by Messrs. King and Rowney. And it is further to 

 be observed, with regard to many of their arguments, that they are based rather 

 upon the appearances presented by the Serpentine Marbles of Connemara and 

 other localities which present the Eozoic structure in its least characteristic de- 

 velopment, than upon that of the Canadian specimens, which present it in its 

 least metamorphic condition. Every paleeontologist who is acquainted with the 

 fact that even a recent Coral may be changed by atmospheric agencies into. 

 a crystalline limestone (see Sir C. Lyell's ' Principles of Geology,' 9th edit., 

 p. 794), would feel the absurdity of maintaining that because the great mass of 

 the Carboniferous Limestone has now a crystalline or subcrystalline aggregation, 

 it cannot have been originally deposited as Coral in the manner indicated by the 

 structure of the parts in which the original characters of these ancient reefs are 

 best preserved. Yet this is precisely the line of argument taken by Profs. King 

 and Rowney in regard to the Eozoic limestones. It is the striking contrast be- 

 tween the features of the comparatively unchanged Eozoon of Petite Nation, in 

 Canada, and those of the obviously metamorphosed and perhaps disintegrated 

 Eozoon of Connemara, which most satisfactorily indicates the organic structure 

 of the former, by showing what mineralization has done, and therefore can do, in 

 the latter ; all this being in the contrary direction (if I may so express myself) to 

 the constructive action sq gbvious in the regular disposition of the component 

 parts of the former. 



