543 



it, therefore, to be still a fact that no vestige of ' ' Uozoon" has yet been 

 found except in metamorphic rocks, whether completely changed, or 

 "comparatively unaltered." So far, then, a disastrous failure has 

 attended all the efforts that have been made to meet oar implied 

 challenge to believers in " Eozoon" — to produce a single specimen from 

 the "miles in thickness" of " unaltered calcareous, argillaceous, and 

 mixed deposits," anterior in age to, or synchronous with, the Liassic 

 " eozoonal" ophite of the Isle of Skye. 



Nothing daunted by their inability to meet our challenge, our 

 opponents still indulge in a style of reasoning and writing that ill 

 becomes scientific men. Dr. Carpenter has now so much confidence in 

 the " creature of the dawn" as to " believe" that it has lived through 

 all geological time ; forgetting that by this expansion of faith the moun- 

 tain he has to remove is correspondingly enlarged. To find no remains 

 of "mozoon' 1 in ordinary unaltered rocks, ranging from the Laurentian 

 to the Liassic inclusive, seemed sufficient to shake the faith of the most 

 enthusiastic : it was surely damaging enough to be struggling impotently 

 against a Liassic rock in the state of white crystalline serpentinous marble 

 containing "'Eozoon;'''' which, " as it recedes from" the agent of this 

 condition, " darkens in colour, loses its metamorphic aspect, and gradu- 

 ally passes into ordinary limestone ; M * and becoming in the latter state 

 divested of all traces of the reputed organism ! Now, however, Dr. Car- 

 penter has made himself responsible for its occurrence in more recent 

 deposits : he has thoughtlessly allowed himself to be crushed by the well- 

 examined chalk rocks, essentially foraminiferal, but demonstratively non- 

 " eozoonal !" 



Faith, there are too many reasons for knowing, frequently waxes 

 beyond all comprehension. We are now unable to resist referring to 

 some remarks by Dr. Carpenter in connexion with the " transparent gela- 

 tinous substance," " somewhat similar to the plasmodia of botanists," 

 discovered in deep-sea mud by Professor Huxley, who has named it 

 "BathyMus." Although unable to " call it either plant or animal," the 

 latter considers it " a living substance, susceptible of apparently indefi- 

 nite growth."f Dr. Carpenter describes this lowest of the lo west as a " liv- 

 ing organism of a type even lower, because less definite than that of 

 Sponges and Ehizopods ;" adding, that " the discovery of this in- 

 definite plasmodium, covering a wide area of the existing sea-bottom, 

 should afford a remarkable confirmation, to such (at least) as still think 

 confirmation necessary, of the doctrine of the organic origin of the 

 serpentine-limestone of the Laurentian formation. For if Bathybius, 

 like the testaceous Ehizopods, could form for itself a shelly envelope, 



altered rocks to contain crystalline aggregations of felspar, and the minerals forming 

 ophites and diabases (see " Geology of Canada," 1863, p. 606 ; and Esquisse Geolo- 

 gique du Canada, p. 20). Rocks of the kind occurring in Connemara contain layers of 

 epidote, &c. 



* Geikie in " Quarterly Journal of Geological Society," vol. xiv., p. 19. 

 f "Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science,'' October, 1868; " Quarterly 

 Journal of Geological Society," vol. xxv., p. 118. 



11. T. A. PEOC. VOL. X. 4 C 



