THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE; 109 



rials. What takes place now has probably taken 

 place in all intermediate time, between the present 

 epoch and that of the first appearance of Life upon our 

 globe. The variability of this new-born living matter 

 and of the lowest forms evolved therefrom is most 

 marked, and probably has always been so in past ages. 

 In all periods, therefore, whilst there have been forms of 

 life, both animal and vegetal, of varying degrees of 

 complexity and of varying stability, reproducing their 

 kind by the different modes of homogenetic reproduction, 

 there have always been a teeming multitude of more 

 variable and plastic forms, more or less immediately 

 developed from the new-born living matter which is 

 continually springing into existence. These lower 

 forms, produced in the same epoch, differ in accordance 

 with the conditions by which they are surrounded, and 

 the variations in the exact nature of the molecules from 

 which they arise ; some of these first forms may have 

 differed notably from epoch to epoch, and we are by no 

 means to conclude that all the primordial forms of 

 to-day are similar to those which made their appearance 

 during the Silurian or Carboniferous ages, when the sum 

 total of telluric conditions, capable of influencing such 

 lower forms, may have been so different ^ . All that 



^ Hence, there may have been many different starting-points, along 

 which evolution may have progressed to a certain though variable 

 extent. This view lessens the difficulties of the naturalist, who is no 

 longer bound to look upon all animals and plants as members of a 

 single imperfect series. The routes which have given rise to all the 



