[Footnote 27: By Mr. Bicknell at Newbury, and Mr. Burbank at Chelmsford. The latter gentleman has since maintained that the limestones at the latter place are not true beds; but his own descriptions and figures lead to the belief that this is an error of observation on his part. The Eozoon in the Chelmsford specimens and in those of Warren, New York, is in small and rare fragments in serpentinous limestone.] [Footnote 28: See an excellent account of one of these visits by Dr. Bonney, _Geological Magazine_, 1895.] Eozoon is not, however, the only witness to the great fact of Laurentian life, of which it is the most conspicuous exponent. In many of the Laurentian limestones, mixed with innumerable fragments of Eozoon, there are other fragments with traces of organic structure of a different character. There are also casts in silicious matter which seem to indicate smaller species of Foraminifera; and large laminated forms, apparently organic, yet distinct from Eozoon. Some of these must be noticed in the following pages. Other discoveries also are foreshadowed here. The microscope may yet detect the true nature and affinities of some of the fragments associated with Eozoon. Less altered portions of the Laurentian rocks may be found, where even the vegetable matter may retain its organic forms, and where fossils may be recognised by their external outlines as well as by their internal structure. Thus the time may come when the rocks now called Primordial shall not be held to be so in any strict sense, and when swarming dynasties of Protozoa and other low forms of life may be known as inhabitants of oceans vastly ancient as compared with even the old Primordial seas. Who knows whether even the land of the Laurentian time may not have been clothed with plants, perhaps as much more strange and weird than those of the Devonian and Carboniferous, as those of the latter are when compared with modern forests? _THE DAWN OF LIFE_ VII _THE DAWN OF LIFE_