Eozoön Canadense

Abstract

IT is now about five years since a series of communications to the Geological Society of London by Logan, Dawson, Carpenter, and Sterry Hunt, announced the discovery of organic remains in the Laurentian rocks of Canada. They were decidedly interesting, not only as attempting to show that the belts of limestone interpolated in the great beds of Laurentian Gneiss were organic in their origin, but also from the art which the authors displayed in the mode of placing their views before the public. The realistic manner in which the fossil Eozoön canadense is drawn as it were from the life, coupled with the fixed belief in most men's minds that limestone is necessarily organic in its origin, predisposed many to accept the theory without much inquiry. The reputation of Dr. Carpenter as a physiologist was alone considered sufficient to settle the matter. These views did not, however, long remain unchallenged, for in the following year Professors King and Rowney, in a communication “On the so-called Eozoönal Rock,” detailed the elaborate investigations by which they arrived at the conclusion that the presumed fossil was purely a mineral production. The replies that naturally followed were literally little more than reiterations of previous statements, excepting in the important admission from Dr. Carpenter, that the several features (that is chamber casts, canal system, and proper walls) could be separately paralleled elsewhere. He, however, took his stand upon the combination of the whole found in the Canadian specimens. To the fatal objection that all had been obtained from metamorphosed rocks Dr. Dawson replied by producing a specimen from Tudor, Ontario, which Sir W. E. Logan goes no further than to declare is from comparatively unaltered limestone, but which Dr. Dawson considers furnishes a conclusive answer to all arguments drawn from metamorphism. Since then I am not aware that any further evidence in favour of the organic hypothesis has been made public. On the other hand, Professors King and Rowney announced in a paper, read before the British Association at the Liverpool meeting, that they had discovered the features of the so-called organism in the Ophite of Strath in the Isle of Skye, an altered sedimentary deposit of the Liassic age, in which evidence of its mineral origin was conclusively proved. Here, at present, the matter rests; but in my opinion ample materials exist for forming a judgment, not by reliance on authority but by independent reasoning. With this object in view, and with your permission, I will proceed to detail a few of the facts of the case. Before doing so I would, however, call attention to the strange absence of any allusion to obvious objections which characterises the first series of papers, and to the persistent begging of the question involved in constantly speaking of the specimens as undoubted fossils. The adoption of this objectionable practice under authority of such eminent names is prejudicial to an impartial judgment, as it indirectly influences the mind. I am quite willing to admit that there existed sufficient reasons for suspecting them to be fossils, but I submit that it is not philosophical to state so distinctly before a thorough examination of all the objections. For evidence of this having been done I search these papers in vain. How then can any one, accustomed to scientific methods of investigation, help suspecting that under all this scientific and pictorial use of the imagination there exists or lurks a fallacy?