545 



dawn" with no independent testimony ; contenting themselves, with a 

 few trifling exceptions, by examining it from a single point of view ; 

 even forgetting, in their excusable enthusiasm, to notice certain grave 

 difficulties they cannot but have observed, and which, notwithstanding 

 our having pointed them out, have been left unexplained, and still remain 

 an insurmountable obstacle to the thoughtful acceptance of the " received 

 doctrine." 



Dr. Carpenter proclaims the " moral certainty" of "a number of 

 separate and independent facts" having a " consistency." The facts 

 referred to may be " consistent," but certainly they cannot be called 

 " independent." To us they are strictly and simply correlative. " In- 

 dependent facts," in the question at issue, must be gathered from those 

 sciences which bear directly upon it — as chemistry, mineralogy, and 

 geology. # 



Viewing "Eozoon" in its chemical relations, it is inexplicable — so 

 much so, that to account for certain persistent characters of the " canal 

 system," and " nummuline layer," Dr. Carpenter has proposed two 

 "ideas," one of which is altogether unscientific, and the other is inad- 

 missible; while Dr. Sterry Hunt's hypothesis for the infilling of the 

 "chambers" and "other cavities" has no tangible evidence in its 

 favour. Examined miner alogically , it is absolutely necessary to ignore 

 not only a group of well-attested cases, offering a "combination of 

 phenomena" more or less agreeing with those urgedinfavour of u Eo%oon," 

 but equally the clear inference that such "combination" in " eozoonal" 

 ophite is as much paragenetic as it is in chondroditic and other rocks. 

 Regarded geologically, "Eozoon'" signally fails in the circumstances of 

 occurrence, necessitated by the plainest considerations pertaining to 

 sedimentary lithology ; never presenting itself except in metamorphic 

 rocks belonging to widely separated systemal periods, and thereby 

 equally failing to meet the most obvious requirements of palaeontology. 



Finally, to subscribe to the organic origin of "Eozoon," the chemist 

 must become a believer in g^st-alchymy, and in direct oceanic precipi- 

 tations unknown in nature. The mineralogist must assume certain 

 obscure and insufficiently tested bodies to consist of calcite : he must be 

 inappreciative of the various allomorphs of serpentine, and of pseudo- 

 morphic phenomena ; and consider every imbedded crystalline body — 

 " tuberculated, " or "segmented" — ■" cylindrically shaped," or with 

 angles rounded off — to be the remains of an organism. The paleon- 

 tologist, besides slighting all he knows of the circumstances of petrifac- 

 tion, must accept as a " fossil" a production never found in rocks that 

 ought to contain it. Even the zoologist must believe to be a " nummu- 

 line foraminifer " what is structurally an Impossibilitas Naturm, in 

 having a " canal system" and " skeleton" that often " ran wild"* without 

 either "chambers" or a "cell wall;" and in being seldom otherwise 

 than inconceivably the result of pseudopodial tubulation, 



" Solvite tantis aaimura monstris, 

 Solvite, Super i !."• 



