The Tudor Specimen of Eozoon

Abstract

The unanimity with which the view of the organic origin of Eozoon canadense was received on its announcement in 1865 by Sir William Logan, Dr.(afterwards Sir J. W.) Dawson, and Dr. W. JB. Carpenter, in the Quarterly Journal of this Society, was first seriously broken by the publication, in the succeeding volume, of the memoir by Professors King and Kowney “On the so-called Eozoonal Rock”. In the following year the Quarterly Journal contained a series of “Notes on Fossils recently obtained from the Laurentian Rocks of Canada, and on objections to the organic nature of Eozoon ” by Dr. (afterwards Sir J. W.) Dawson, the most valuable contribution in which was the description of a specimen found by Mr. H. G. Vennor in a limestone belonging to the Hastings series at Tudor, Hastings county, Ontario. This was identified as Eozoon canadense , though as possibly a new variety, by Sir J. W. Dawson, who seemed to consider that this discovery relieved him of the necessity of making any detailed reply to the arguments of his critics, as “furnishing a conclusive answer to all those objections to the organic nature of Eozoon which have been founded on comparisons of its structures with the forms of fibrous, dendritic, or concretionary minerals—objections which, however plausible in the case of highly crystalline rocks, in which organic remains may be simulated by merely mineral appearances readily confounded with them, are wholly inapplicable to the present specimen ” §. The importance of the new discovery depended on the