"18th. Dr. Hunt, in order to account for the serpentine, loganite, and malacolite, being the presumed in-filling substances of Eozoon, has conceived the ‘novel doctrine,’ that such minerals were directly deposited in the ocean waters in which this ‘fossil’ lived. We have gone over all his evidences and arguments without finding one to be substantiated.
"19th. Having investigated the alleged cases of ‘chambers’ and ‘tubes’ occurring ‘filled with calcite,’ and presumed to be ‘a conclusive answer to’ our ‘objections,’ we have shown that there are the strongest grounds for removing them from the category of reliable evidences on the side of the organic doctrine. The Tudor specimen has been shown to be equally unavailable.
"20th. The occurrence of the best preserved specimens of Eozoon Canadense in rocks that are in a ‘highly crystalline condition’ (Dawson) must be accepted as a fact utterly fatal to its organic origin.
“21st. The occurrence of ‘eozoonal features’ solely in crystalline or metamorphosed rocks, belonging to the Laurentian, the Lower Silurian, and the Liassic systems—never in ordinary unaltered deposits of these and the intermediate systems—must be assumed as completely demonstrating their purely mineral origin.”
The answers already given to these objections may be summed up severally as follows:—
1st. This is a mere hypothesis to account for the forms presented by serpentine grains and by Eozoon. Hunt has shown that it is untenable chemically, and has completely exploded it in his recent papers on Chemistry and Geology.[AP] My own observations show that it does not accord with the mode of occurrence of serpentine in the Laurentian limestones of Canada.
[AP] Boston, 1874.
2nd. Some of the things stated to parallel the intermediate skeleton of Eozoon, are probably themselves examples of that skeleton. Others have been shown to have no resemblance to it.
3rd. The words “more or less” indicate the precise value of this statement, in a question of comparison between mineral and organic structures. So the prismatic structure of satin-spar may be said “more or less” to resemble that of a shell, or of the cells of a Stenopora.