PART I. THE ADAPTATION OF ENERGY 



CHAPTER I 

 PREPARATION OF THE EARTH FOR LIFE 



Primordial environment — the lifeless earth. Age of the earth and beginning 

 of the life period. Primordial environment — the lifeless water. Salt as 

 a measure of the age of the ocean. Primordial chemical environment. 

 Primordial environment — the atmosphere. 



In the spirit of the preparatory work of the great pioneers 

 of geology, such as Hutton, Scrope, and Lyell, and of the his- 

 tory of the evolution of the working mechanism of organic 

 evolution, as developed by Darwin and Wallace,^ our infer- 

 ences as to past processes are founded upon the observation 

 of present processes. In general, our narrative will therefore 

 follow the "uniformitarian" method of interpretation first 

 presented in 1788 by Hutton,- who may be termed the Newton 

 of geology, and elaborated in 1830 by Lyell,'' the master of 

 Charles Darwin. The uniformitarian doctrine is this: present 

 continuity implies the improbability of past catastrophism and 

 violence of change, either in the lifeless or in the living world; 

 moreover, we seek to interpret the changes and laws of past 

 time through those which we observe at the present time. 

 This was Darwin's secret, learned from Lyell. 



Cosmic Primordial Environment — The Lifeless Earth 



Let us first look at the cosmic environment, the inorganic 

 world before the entrance of life. Since 1825, when Cuvier"* 



1 Judd, John W., igio. -Hutton, James, 1795. 



^ Lyell, Charles, 1830. * Cuvier, Baron Georges L. C. F. D., 1825. 



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