IV. On the structure and affinities of Eozoon Canadense . In a letter to the President. By W. B. Carpenter, M. D., F. R. S

Abstract

I cannot doubt that your attention has been drawn to the discovery announced by Sir Charles Lyell in his Presidential Address at the late Meeting of the British Association, of large masses of a fossil organism referable to the Foraminiferous type, near the base of the Laurentian series of rocks in Canada. The geological position of this fossil (almost 40,000 feet beneath the base of the Silurian system) is scarcely more remarkable than its zoological relations; for there is found in it the evidence of a most extraordinary development of that Rhizopod type of animal life which at the present time presents itself only in forms of comparative insignificance —a development which enabled it to separate carbonate of lime from the ocean-waters in quantity sufficient to produce masses rivalling in bulk and solidity those of the stony corals of later epochs, and thus to furnish (as there seems good reason to believe) the materials of those calcareous strata which occur in the higher parts of the Laurentian series. Although a detailed account of this discovery, including the results of the microscopic examinations into the structure of the fossil which have been made by Dr. Dawson and myself, has been already communicated to the Geological Society by Sir "William E. Logan, I venture to believe that the Fellows of the Royal Society may be glad to be more directly made acquainted with my view of its relations to the types of Foraminifera which I have already described in the Philosophical Transactions.