This discovery is also of importance as connecting Eozoon through Cryptozoon with large organisms, probably Protozoa, extending upward to the top of the Cambrian, and thus forming a link of connection between the life of the Eozoic and that of the Palæozoic period. Matthew has also described forms which he regards as spicules of sponges from the Laurentian of New Brunswick.[42] One of these seems to present cruciform needles forming square areas, like the Protospongia of Salter, from the Cambrian. The other has simple elongate needle-like spicules arranged in bundles. Matthew summarizes the rocks containing these fossils as in the table on p, 216, in descending order, the highest bed being below the Etcheminian.[43] The first and second groups, it will be observed, are equivalent to the Huronian; the third corresponds to the Grenvillian, and the fourth to the Lower Laurentian.
[42] Fuller descriptions of these rocks may be found in Rep. Prog. Geol. Surv. of Canada, 1872, pp. 30, 34, etc.
[43] Bulletin Nat. Hist. Society of New Brunswick, 1890 where further details are given as to the fossils.
DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS
IX
DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS
T
THE active objectors to the animal nature of Eozoon have been few, though some of them have returned to the attack with a pertinacity and determination which would lead one to believe that they think the most sacred interests of science to be dependent on the annihilation of this proto-foraminifer. I do not propose here to treat of the objections in detail. I have presented the case of Eozoon on its own merits, and on these it must stand. I may merely state that the objectors strive to account for the existence of Eozoon by purely mineral deposition, and that the complicated changes which they require to suppose are perhaps the strongest indirect evidence for the necessity of regarding the structures as organic. The reader who desires to appreciate this may consult my memoir of 1888.[44]
[44] Also Rowney and King's papers in Journal Geological Society, August, 1866; and Proceedings Irish Academy, 1870 and 1871.
I confess that I feel disposed to treat very tenderly the position of objectors. The facts I have stated make large demands on the faith of the greater part even of naturalists. Very few geologists or naturalists have much knowledge of the structure of foraminiferal shells, or would be able under the microscope to recognise them with certainty. Nor have they any distinct ideas of the appearances of such structures under different kinds of preservation and mineralization. Further, they have long been accustomed to regard the so-called Azoic or Archæan rocks as not only destitute of organic remains, but as being in such a state of metamorphism that these could not have been preserved had they existed. Few, therefore, are able intelligently to decide for themselves, and so they are called on to trust to the investigations of others, and on their testimony to modify in a marked degree their previous beliefs as to the duration of life on our planet. In these circumstances it is rather wonderful that the researches made with reference to Eozoon have met with so general acceptance, and that the resurrection of this ancient inhabitant of the earth has not aroused more of the sceptical tendency of our age.