1395.] Is Daemoneliz a Burrow ? 521 
intertwining give it a tufaceous or sponge-like structure, yet 
it is in itself no organism.” 
The author is entirely cognisant of the fact that Loess is 
penetrated by tubes—but they are vertical rather than inter- 
twining and ramifying,—whereby are produced lines of weak- 
mess in vertical planes. The result being manifest in the 
sides of cafions and bluffs which are as upright as walls. This 
it is that gives our bluff deposits their character. Of course, 
ordinary meteoric water, charged more or less with carbon 
dioxide, percolates readily through the porous Loess, where it 
finds superabundance of lime salts to be dissolved out. It 
finds easy passage through these tubes, and as evaporation 
goes on and the carbon dioxide is liberated, lime carbonate is 
deposited as a white lining to these tubes. 
In the color, and in that alone, is there any similarity be- 
tween the vertical tubes in Daemonelix and those of the Loess, 
although we are led to the inference that they are the same. 
In chemical composition the two are totally unlike. The 
tubes of the Loess are entirely inorganic; those of the Daemo- 
nelix are entirely organic, as every section shows. There re- 
mains then not so much as a semblence of an analogy between 
the tubes of the Loess and those of the Daemonelix. 
In reply to the description of the characteristic and very in- 
tricately tangled tubules on the surface of Daemonelix 
(Figured in Pl. III of the paper criticized) he asks, “Could 
not this tube structure originate from the dry grass of which 
the gopher built his nest?” It seems to me there are two 
very patent reasons why this can not be. In the first place 
the so-called hay is not confined to the region of the sup- 
posed nest, but covers every portion of the entire "fossil. 
The burrow then in which the gopher presumably dwelt 
was literally tamped with fine hay from bottom totop. Where 
then did the gopher and his prolific family dwell ? 
In the second place, if it were hay, the microscope would 
easily recognize it. But to the contrary the microscope shows 
it is not hay, because there are no fibro-vascular bundles, 
which grass would of necessity show; nor is there a trace 
of the siliceous epidermal layer which would certainly be 
