"8th. The ‘nummuline layer’ is paralleled by the fibrous coat which is occasionally present on the surface of grains of chondrodite.
"9th. We have shown that the relative position of two superposed asbestiform layers (an upper and an under ‘proper wall’), and the admitted fact of their component aciculi often passing continuously and without interruption from one ‘chamber cast’ to another, to the exclusion of the ‘intermediate skeleton,’ are totally incompatible with the idea of the ‘nummuline layer’ having resulted from pseudopodial tubulation.
"10th. The so-called ‘stolons’ and ‘passages of communication exactly corresponding with those described in Cycloclypeus,’ have been shown to be tabular crystals and variously formed bodies, belonging to different minerals, wedged crossways or obliquely in the calcareous interspaces between the grains and plates of serpentine.
"11th. The ‘canal system’ is composed of serpentine, or malacolite. Its typical kinds in the first of these minerals may be traced in all stages of formation out of plates, prisms, and other solids, undergoing a process of superficial decretion. Those in malacolite are made up of crystals—single, or aggregated together—that have had their planes, angles, and edges rounded off; or have become further reduced by some solvent.
"12th. The ‘canal system’ in its remarkable branching varieties is completely paralleled by crystalline configurations in the coccolite marble of Aker, in Sweden; and in the crevices of a crystal of spinel imbedded in a calcitic matrix from Amity, New York.
"13th. The configurations, presumed to represent the ‘canal systems,’ are totally without any regularity of form, of relative size, or of arrangement; and they occur independently of and apart from other ‘eozoonal features’ (Amity, Boden, etc.); facts not only demonstrating them to be purely mineral products, but which strike at the root of the idea that they are of organic origin.
"14th. In answer to the argument that as all the foregoing ‘eozoonal features’ are occasionally found together in ophite, the combination must be considered a conclusive evidence of their organic origin, we have shown, from the composition, physical characters, and circumstances of occurrence and association of their component serpentine, that they represent the structural and chemical changes which are eminently and peculiarly characteristic of this mineral. It has also been shown that the combination is paralleled to a remarkable extent in chondrodite and its calcitic matrix.
"15th. The ‘regular alternation of lamellæ of calcareous and silicious minerals’ (respectively representing the ‘intermediate skeleton’ and ‘chamber casts’) occasionally seen in ophite, and considered to be a ‘fundamental fact’ evidencing an organic arrangement, is proved to be a mineralogical phenomenon by the fact that a similar alternation occurs in amphiboline-calcitic marbles, and gneissose rocks.
"16th. In order to account for certain untoward difficulties presented by the configurations forming the ‘canal system,’ and the aciculi of the ‘nummuline layer’—that is, when they occur as ‘solid bundles’—or are ‘closely packed’—or ‘appear to be glued together’—Dr. Carpenter has proposed the theory that the sarcodic extensions which they are presumed to represent have been ‘turned into stone’ (a ‘silicious mineral’) ‘by Nature’s cunning’ (‘just as the sarcodic layer on the surface of the shell of living Foraminifers is formed by the spreading out of coalesced bundles of the pseudopodia that have emerged from the chamber wall’)—‘by a process of chemical substitution before their destruction by ordinary decomposition.’ We showed this quasi-alchymical theory to be altogether unscientific.
"17th. The ‘silicious mineral’ (serpentine) has been analogued with those forming the variously-formed casts (in ‘glauconite,’ etc.) of recent and fossil Foraminifers. We have shown that the mineral silicates of Eozoon have no relation whatever to the substances composing such casts.