Fig. 17. Structure of the oldest known Fossil (Eozöon Canadense). A thin section magnified. From a Photograph by Dr. Carpenter, London.

of its structure can be deciphered in thin, polished sections of Laurentian limestones and serpentines, when carefully examined under the microscope. These beings have been entombed in Canadian soil, and we have again to thank the energy and ability of the Canadian geologists for this modern revelation. The microscopic examinations have been chiefly made by Dr. Dawson, of Montreal, and have been fully corroborated by Dr. Carpenter, of London, England.

As might be expected, this being belongs in the very lowest rank of God's creatures. It is classed with the Foraminifera, in the group of Protozoa. It was related to the nummulite, whose skeletons have contributed so largely to the material of the Pyramids-monuments which perpetuate the memory equally of nummulites and Egyptian monarchs. It was related, also, to the little disc-like forms called Orbitoides, so abundant in the white limestone of the southern portion of the "Gulf States." Indeed, the kindred of this primeval forerunner of animal forms have been permitted to maintain existence in all seas, and in all ages, down to the present day. The type came upon the earth when nothing could dispute its pre-eminence. It has claimed a place among the ranks of higher animals in the ascending series, and does not shrink even from the face of man. Nay, the type maintains a foothold in the stagnant pools that gather upon the surface of the land, where man asserts peculiar supremacy. It demands our reverence for its antiquity. Let us pay it our respects.

Gazing through the microscope into a drop of water from some standing pool, our attention would scarcely be arrested by the sight of a little shapeless lump, which is as soft, and jelly-like, and inanimate, to all appearance, as any thing can be. But this is our Protozoan. It may be the species upon which science has imposed the name Amaba

princeps, preserving the same gravity at the christening as if she had been naming a gorilla or a human animal, so impartial is science. We continue to gaze at our Amoeba, and presently a little filament is extended like an arm, and perhaps immediately withdrawn. Soon a similar arm stretches forth in another position, and then another. Perhaps half a dozen arms extend themselves at once from dif

Fig. 18. Amoeba Princeps, in different forms.

ferent sides, some long, some short, some thick, some thin. They shorten themselves, or entirely disappear, according to some inexplicable caprice. Now we discover the object. of their movements. They are feeling for food; the Amoba is in search of his breakfast. As soon as a nutritive particle is touched, it is seized by one of these arms and introduced into the-mouth, do you say? No, indeed; the animal has no mouth. The food, however, gets inside by some means, and you may behold it there. It lies imbedded in the midst of the little lump of lly.

There is

no stomach, no liver, no heart, no breathing organ, no head, no feet-in short, this animal is destitute of organs, except as it employs the whole body for every purpose. Whenever it seizes its food it extemporizes an arm for the work. Whenever it eats it must extemporize a mouth. Whenever it digests it must extemporize, a stomach. It seizes, it eats, it digests, it breathes with the whole body. There are few animals, indeed, so utterly destitute of differentiation of the parts of the body. There is not the least division of labor. It symbolizes primeval society, in which every man does every thing that is done in the community.

Our Laurentian protozoan was as poorly furnished and as badly organized a being as this. But he possessed great advantages in point of size, and was, moreover, furnished with a stony armor-a wise provision, as one would think, for a creature that must buffet the storms which pulverized mountains, and defy the chemistry that dissolved granite. It only remains to effect the formal introduction to the reader. His name is Eozoön Canadense. [See Appendix, Note II.]

I said that the burial-place of this most venerable denizen of our planet was among the Laurentian rocks of Canada. Strange as it may appear, no vestige of animal organization has as yet been found among the overlying Huronian strata. It can not be doubted that life still continued upon the earth. It is possible that some of the most ancient forms of the Old World flourished during this age. Indeed, they herald the name of an Eozöon from Bohemia, and still another from the Emerald Isle. It seems certain that the latter had no contemporary and no rival for supremacy. He certainly was the first of the Fenians. But in America, so far as actual discovery goes, life touched the earth at a single point, and vanished again from view. This dawn of animal life was like the first gleam of sun

light that stole through a rift in the clouds of the primeval tempest, destined to be closed out again for a geologic age.

This enormous interval of time, down to the close of the Huronian, relieved of its absolute sterility of life by only a single species certainly known, we designate as Eozoic TIME.

"The curtain falls, and the scene is changed." The crust, now becoming too large for the ever-shrinking nucleus, settles down to a closer fitting around it. The envelope, of course, must wrinkle, and the wrinkles must protrude their ridges, in some cases, above the waters. The horizontality of the primeval strata is thus broken. In some instances they are burst asunder, and the molten granite is poured out through the fissure. In other cases a huge back is simply elevated a moderate distance above the level of the sea. Weary of his old position, the giant, in adjusting himself in his new one, leaves his elbows protruding. Indeed, if we may extend this ugly figure, he may be represented as settling himself with an entire arm protruding above the waters which swept over North America. Beginning at the coast of Labrador, the armor ancient ridge of land-extends southwest to the north shore of Lake Huron. Here is the elbow. The fore-arm and hand extend thence northwesterly toward the Arctic Ocean. So it seems to be an arrangement of Nature that "Johnny Bull" shall continue to thrust his elbows into the sides of Young America! We acquiesce, for the present, in this arrangement. Meanwhile, other spirits will be summoned from the "vasty deep," and teeming life will appear upon the stage in the next act of the drama.