Arranging themselves in strict obedience 

 to dominant Natural laws of ■which we have 

 but little knowledge, in a vastness of Space 

 of which we have no intelligent conception, 

 and exhibiting an almost unmeasurable min- 

 uteness reduciug our feeble powers of compre- 

 hension to appalled nothingness, these germs 

 are slowly developed, altered and perfected 

 during an immensity of periods of time com- 

 pared to which the six thousand years of the 

 Bible is but a trifling era — a pebble on the sea 

 shore ; a tiny star in the Milky Way. 



These germs of life and the individuals 

 growing out of them, were constantly exper- 

 iencing change. Weakened by exposure and 

 attack they were only preserved unmodified 

 for a brief (though variable) period by means 

 of the more or less effectual resistance they 

 were able to offer to climatic conditions, chan- 

 ges of food, convulsions and transformations 

 of Nature and the destructive inroads of over- 

 poweringly hostile forms of reptile, piscine or 

 animal Life For example : just as most of 

 you have beheld a neglected flower perishing 

 in the midst of over-topping weeds or languish 

 ing for lack of the vital sustenance that grass 

 or clover has withdrawn from its starving roots 



