DAEMONELIX FIBERS AND CAKES. 307 



the multifarious forms result. The one is but a simple fiber, the others 

 but aggregations or colonies of them, so far as the eye or the microscope 

 itself, for that matter, can see. There exists neither superficial nor struct- 

 ural differences of any kind, so far as can be learned, between the primi- 

 tive tubule and the complex forms. Pick such a fiber from the sand-rock, 

 or from a fossil bone, or from any of the Daemonelix group, even from 

 that splendid spiral aggregation, the Devil's corkscrew itself, and all are 

 precisely alike. Cut sections of them for the microscope and each and 

 every one shows exactly the same cellular, non-vascular, parenchymatous 

 tissue. The fiber is the elemental or fundamental part of Daemonelix. 



DAEMONELIX CAKES. 



On ascending the canyon toward Eagle Crag, where the chance for 

 observation is especially favorable, one comes to the forms next in sim- 

 plicity, which for lack of a better name the students of our party dubbed 

 " Daemonelix cakes." They are, in fact, not wholly unlike camp griddle 

 cakes in point of shape, size, and thickness as well as in the manner in 

 which they, batter-like, threw out occasional pseudopodia-like lobes. 

 The cakes occur very abundantly throughout a vertical range of some 

 6 to 8 meters, at a level of from 50 to 60 meters below the regular Dae- 

 monelix beds, and as they stand, weathered out, on the sides of the 

 canyon they look like great beds of bracket fungus. Neither below this 

 horizon nor above have they been found. Though often solitary, they 

 are not infrequently in groups of twos and threes, and occasionally in 

 large clusters. In the last case it is interesting to note that they rise one 

 above another in steps or terraces, the plane of each being coincident 

 with the bedding plane (see plate 32, figures 5, 6, 7, 8). 



Though commonly circular in form, many are irregularly lobed, as if 

 the plant had thrown out filamentous aggregations in various directions. 



As to dimensions, they are seldom more than 5 to 10 centimeters 

 across, and in thickness vary from £ to 2 centimeters. 



Possibly as sedimentation went on the original cake was choked and 

 covered w T ith sand, save a vigorous offshoot or so which grew upward and 

 spread out as before, but on a higher level, and so for eacH succeeding 

 member of the whole cluster. Be this as it may, it is evident at a glance 

 that there is organic connection between the individual components of 

 such a cluster. 



The bottoms of the so-called cakes lie in horizontal planes, as if in 

 conformity to the bed of the Pliocene lake on which they grew. May 

 we not conceive of this filamentous alga, or of these rootlets, or whatever 

 they are, as growing in a closely tangled mass or colony, flat on the sand- 

 bars of this lake, to be covered with sand as deposition progressed ? 



