NONSUCH 



emotional effect went, a full charge of H E might 

 have gone off at my elbow. I experienced a visual 

 shell-shock, for high overhead there was etched the 

 strongest, most materialistic rainbow I have ever 

 seen, one end of which began in mid-air, and the 

 other curved down, down, down, holding true from 

 red to violet, to the rocks beside me. Once before, 

 on a Guiana jungle river, I have been actually at 

 the end of a rainbow, when, at my very side, one 

 colored the bulwarks of our Akawai canoe. 



As I stood up I dropped my Halicystis grape, 

 but swiftly salvaged it again as it bobbed about on 

 the water, not because of its rarity, but by reason 

 of its part in my game. For on the Third Day of 

 Creation, somewhere about seven hundred millions 

 of years ago, when the waters and the sky and the 

 earth had been running satisfactorily for a while, 

 there appeared the first living organisms compara- 

 ble with my pseudo-grape. For several reasons the 

 round green Halicystis was the most appropriate 

 of modern living beings to play the part of one of 

 the earliest of organisms. First of all, it is a plant, 

 an alga, and plants certainly preceded animals. 

 And secondly, it is a single cell, and unquestionably 

 the protophyta are the most accurately named of 

 all groups. Again, many creatures of ancient times 

 amaze us with their astounding size — pterodac- 

 tyls, dragonflies, brontosaurs, titanotheres, moas 

 — all exceeding any corresponding organisms liv- 

 ing on the earth today. In Halicystis we have a con- 

 temporary miracle, no whit less wonderful than 



12 



