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
If all specimens of Eozoon were of the acervuline character, the
comparison of the chamber-casts with concretionary granules might
have some plausibility. But it is to be observed that the laminated
arrangement is the typical one; and the study of the larger
specimens, cut under the direction of Sir W. E. Logan, shows that
these laminated forms must have grown on certain strata-planes before
the deposition of the overlying beds, and that the beds are, in part,
composed of the broken fragments of similar laminated structures.
Further, much of the apparently acervuline Eozoon rock is composed
of such broken fragments, the interstices between which should not
be confounded with the chambers: while the fact that the serpentine
fills such interstices as well as the chambers shows that its
arrangement is not concretionary. Again, these chambers are filled in
different specimens with serpentine, pyroxene, loganite, calcareous
spar, chondrodite, or even with arenaceous limestone. It is also to
be observed that the examination of a number of limestones, other
than Canadian, by Messrs. King and Rowney, has obliged them to admit
that the laminated forms in combination with the canal-system are
"essentially Canadian," and that the only instances of structures
clearly resembling the Canadian specimens are afforded by limestones
Laurentian in age, and in some of which (as, for instance, in those
of Bavaria and Scandinavia) Carpenter and Gümbel have actually found
the structure of Eozoon. The other serpentine-limestones examined
(for example, that of Skye) are admitted to fail in essential points
of structure; and the only serpentine believed to be of eruptive
origin examined by them is confessedly destitute of all semblance
of Eozoon. Similar results have been attained by the more careful
researches of Prof. Gümbel, whose paper is well deserving of study by
all who have any doubts on this subject.
(B.) Reply by Dr. Hunt to Chemical Objections--(_Ibid._).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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