Some Salient Points in the Science of the EarthDawson, John William, Sir
Science
Some Salient Points in the Science of the Earth
Dawson, John William, Sir
Geology; Paleontology
The limestone is here highly inclined and much contorted, and in all
the excavations a thickness of about 100 feet of it may be exposed.
It is white and crystalline, varying much, however, in coarseness in
different bands. It is in some layers pure and white; in others it
is traversed by many grey layers of gneissose and other matter, or
by irregular bands and nodules of pyroxene and serpentine, and it
contains subordinate beds of dolomite. In one layer only, and this
but a few feet thick, does the Eozoon occur in abundance in a perfect
state, though fragments and imperfectly preserved specimens abound
in other parts of the bed. It is a great mistake to suppose that it
constitutes whole beds of rock in an uninterrupted mass. Its true mode
of occurrence is best seen on the weathered surfaces of the rock, where
the serpentinous specimens project in irregular patches of various
sizes, sometimes twisted by the contortion of the beds, but often too
small to suffer in this way. On such surfaces the projecting patches
of the fossil exhibit laminæ of serpentine so precisely like the
_Stromatoporæ_ of the Silurian rocks, that any collector would pounce
upon them at once as fossils. In some places these small weathered
specimens can be easily chipped off from the crumbling surface of the
limestone; and it is perhaps to be regretted that they have not been
more extensively shown to palæontologists, with the cut slices which
to many of them are so problematical. One of the original specimens,
brought from the Calumet, and now in the Museum of the Geological
Survey of Canada, was of this kind, and much finer specimens from
Côte St. Pierre are now in that collection and in my own. A very fine
example is represented on the plate facing this chapter, which is taken
from an original photograph. In some of the layers are found other
and more minute vesicular forms, which may be organic, and these,
together with fragmental remains, as ingredients in the limestone, will
be discussed in the sequel. We may merely notice here that the most
abundant layer of Eozoon at this place occurs near the base of the
great limestone band, and that the upper layers, in so far as seen,
are less rich in it. Further, there is no necessary connection between
Eozoon and the occurrence of serpentine, for there are many layers
full of bands and lenticular masses of that mineral without any Eozoon
except occasional fragments, while the fossil is sometimes partially
mineralised with pyroxene, dolomite, or common limestone. The section
in Fig. 4 will serve to show the attitude of the limestone at this
place, while the more general section, Fig. 2, page 101, taken from
Sir William Logan, shows its relation to the other Laurentian rocks.
We may now notice the manner in which the specimens discovered in this
and other places in the Laurentian country came to be regarded as
organic.
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