256 RELICS OF PRIMEVAL LIFE 



in small quantities through various rocks or in 

 limited local beds, or in solution, perhaps as chloride 

 of calcium, in the sea. Dr. Hunt has given chemical 

 grounds for supposing that the most ancient seas 

 were largely supplied with this very soluble salt, 

 instead of the chloride of sodium, or common salt, 

 which now prevails in the sea-water. 



Where in such a world would life be introduced ? 

 on the land or in the waters? All scientific pro- 

 bability would say in the latter. The ocean is now 

 vastly more populous than the land. The waters 

 alone afford the conditions necessary at once for 

 the most minute and the grandest organisms, at 

 once for the simplest and for others of the most 

 complex character. Especially do they afford the 

 best conditions for those animals which subsist in 

 complex communities, and which aggregate large 

 quantities of mineral matter in their skeletons. So 

 true is this that up to the present time all the 

 species of Protozoa and of the animals most nearly 

 allied to them are aquatic. Even in the waters, 

 however, plant life, though possibly in very simple 

 forms, must precede the animal. 



Let humble plants, then, be introduced in the 

 waters, and they would at once begin to use the 



