144 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. vi. 



grated, water", air all round, warmed and illuminated by a brilli- 

 ant sun, ready to become a garden. Did grass and trees and 

 flowers spring into existence, in all the fulness of ripe beauty, by 

 a fiat of Creative Power? or did vegetation, growing up from 

 seed sown, spread and multiply over the whole earth ? Science 

 is bound, by the everlasting law of honour, to fiice fearlessly 

 every problem which can fairly be presented to it. If a probable 

 solution, consistent with the ordinary course of nature, can be 

 found, we must not invoke an abnormal act of Creative Power. 

 When a lava stream flows down the sides of Vesuvius or Etna it 

 quickly cools and becomes solid ; and after a few weeks or years 

 it teems with vegetable and animal life, which for it originated by 

 the transport of seed and ova and by the migration of individual 

 living creatures. When a volcanic island springs up from the 

 sea, and after a few years is found clothed with vegetation, we do 

 not hesitate to assume that seed has been wafted to it through 

 the air, or floated to it on rafts. Is it not possible, and if possible, 

 is it not probable, that the beginning of vegetable life on the 

 earth is to be similarly explained ? Every year thousands, pro- 

 bably millions, of fragments of solid matter fall upon the earth 

 — whence came these fragments ? What is the previous history 

 of any one of them ? Was it created in the beginning of time 

 an amorphous mass ? This idea is so unacceptable that, tacitly 

 or explicitly, all men discard it. It is often assumed that all, 

 and it is certain that some, meteoric stones are fragments which 

 had been broken ofi" from greater masses and launched free into 

 space. It is as sure that collisions must occur between great 

 masses moving through space as it is that ships, steered without 

 intelligence directed to prevent collision, could not cross and re- 

 cross the Atlantic for thousands of years with immunity from 

 collisions. When two great masses come into collision in space 

 it is certain that a large part of each is melted ; but it seems also 

 quite certain that in many cases a large quantity of debris must 

 be shot forth in all directions, much of which may have experi- 

 enced no greater violence than individual pieces of rock experi- 

 ence in a land-slip or in blasting by gunpowder. Should the time 

 when this earth comes into collision with any other body, com- 

 parable in dimensions to itself, be when it is still clothed as at 

 present with vegetation, many great and small fragments carrying 

 seed and living plants and animals would undoubtedly be scattered 

 through space. Hence and because we all confidently believe that 



