^4o TOWARDS THE HUMAN FORM 



among the reefs and under the smallest rocks. The fairest 

 •ornaments of the sea, they were also the habitual food of all 

 those creatures such as Merostomata and Trilobites, which 

 contented themselves with small game. 



The Echinoderms and the Molluscs had not yet attained 

 their final form, for they had scarcely yet recovered from their 

 efforts to save their lives under the hazardous conditions 

 through which they had had to pass. Endowed with only 

 feeble powers of locomotion, the Echinoderms multiplied in situ, 

 the Cystids and Blastoids growing like buds of stone where- 

 •ever they could attach themselves. A few Encrinites out- 

 spread vigorous blossoms on the rocks, and Starfish lived on 

 them when Molluscs were not sufficiently plentiful ; Melonites 

 heaped their purple globes one upon the other in great banks 

 along the sea shores. The Turbos and Avicube, the Nautili, 

 the Pleurotomarias, and the Trochi, had shells almost entirely 

 of shining mother-of-pearl, which was to change later into 

 porcelain, but they had not yet acquired those glowing hues 

 nor those shapes so capricious in appearance — though in 

 reality strictly and wonderfully geometrical — nor yet that 

 ornamentation of such fantastic design, which, under the form 

 of cones, pyramids, sailing barks with twisted and horned 

 prows, delights our eyes to-day. Feeding entirely on such 

 small fry as Diatoms, Radiolaria, Infusoria, and the larvae 

 which were flung as the small change of life into each wave, 

 the early gasteropod Molluscs still floated under water, where 

 they were -easily captured by Sharks, against which their 

 only weapon of defence in the struggle for existence was their 

 prodigious fecundity. Although strange fishes were decimating 

 the swarming worlds of Trilobites at the bottom of the sea, 

 none of those species were in existence which infest it to-day 

 in swift-moving, unnumbered shoals. 



On the land a mantle of green had spread wherever 

 the soil was sufficiently moist, but there was no turf, for our 

 green grass is composed of Grammar, which it required 

 many centuries to elaborate. The soil belonged entirely to 

 Hepaticse, Mosses, the humblest of the creeping Lycopods, 

 and herbaceous ferns, among which the horse-tails uplifted 

 their ringed stems, on which, at regular intervals, grew circlets 

 of slender branches. Above these sorry prairies arose 

 serried ranks of straight-branched fragile trees — Calamites and 



