64 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



that we now use, and then to show what their nature is that 

 adapts them so perfectly to our wants that we go on from 

 day to day, and year to year, discussing these problems in 

 regard to the perfection of plant-life. The things I am now 

 going to state to you are those that I believe are accepted 

 by all persons of science, no matter what theories they may 

 hold in regard to the progress of life on the globe. 



"We all know that there was a time when there was no 

 plant upon this earth. Here was a globe of melted matter, 

 if you please, and by and by a globe covered with solid 

 rock, with no vestige of plant-life upon it. If there is any 

 thing we know in science, we know that ; and yet we are 

 here to-night, surrounded by all these beautiful forms that 

 are spread over the earth from zone to zone ; and not only on 

 the earth, but abounding in the waters; not only in the 

 torrid and temperate zones, but in the frigid. Very few per- 

 sons have any idea of the amount of vegetation in the north- 

 em zone. I confess that I was perfectly astounded, when 

 going up among the icebergs of Greenland and Iceland, at 

 the abundance and variety of the vegetation there, — not on 

 the land, but in the water. As you sail over those beautiful 

 bays of Greenland, and look down into the water, it seems 

 as though you were passing over a forest. It looks as though 

 the vegetation of the land had gone down beneath the 

 waters. You find that vegetation grows there with a rapidity 

 perfectly marvellous. Our boat, that simply rested a single 

 week in the harbor of Godhaab in ice-cold water, was found 

 to be covered with vegetation, and the bottom of our vessel 

 was abundantly covered. There is vegetation, even in that 

 northern zone, in the water, so adapted to the place in which 

 it is found, that it grows in abundance. How has this all 

 been brought about? We know that the earth was first 

 covered with a very low form of plant-life. We have just 

 as low forms of plant-life now. The lowest form is the 

 single cell. We can find plants in our pools in the spring 

 of the year, wliich begin life as a cell, and never go beyond 

 the cell, and propagate themselves by division of the origi- 

 nal cell, or by forming other cells within the original cell. 

 Then come the algce^ the seaweeds, and similar lands of vege- 

 tation. There was a time, in the history of our globe, when 

 those constituted all its vegetation. That was the lower 



