Life's Dawn on Earth: Being the history of the oldest known fossil remains, and their relations to geological time and to the development of the animal kingdomDawson, John William, Sir
History
Life's Dawn on Earth: Being the history of the oldest known fossil remains, and their relations to geological time and to the development of the animal kingdom
Dawson, John William, Sir
Life -- Origin; Paleontology -- Precambrian
I have gone over these objections seriatim, because, though
individually weak, they have an imposing appearance in the aggregate,
and have been paraded as a conclusive settlement of the questions
at issue. They have even been reprinted in the year just past in an
English journal of some standing, which professes to accept only
original contributions to science, but has deviated from its rule in
their favour. I may be excused for adding a portion of my original
argument in opposition to these objections, as given more at length
in the _Transactions of the Irish Academy_.
1. I object to the authors' mode of stating the question at issue,
whereby they convey to the reader the impression that this is merely
to account for the occurrence of certain peculiar forms in ophite.
With reference to this, it is to be observed that the attention of
Sir William Logan, and of the writer, was first called to Eozoon
by the occurrence in Laurentian rocks of definite forms resembling
the Silurian _Stromatoporæ_, and dissimilar from any concretions or
crystalline structures found in these rocks. With his usual sagacity,
Sir William added to these facts the consideration that the mineral
substances occurring is these forms were so dissimilar as to suggest
that the forms themselves must be due to some extraneous cause rather
than to any crystalline or segregative tendency of their constituent
minerals. These specimens, which were exhibited by Sir William as
probably fossils, at the meeting of the American Association in
1859, and noticed with figures in the Report of the Canadian Survey
for 1863, showed under the microscope no minute structures. The
writer, who had at the time an opportunity of examining them, stated
his belief that if fossils, they would prove to be not Corals but
Protozoa.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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