350 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION C. 
animal life at all. The rocks below low-water mark would be 
covered with delicate red and brown seaweeds, and the ocean 
between tide-marks would, then as now, be girdled with a belt of 
vivid green ; but all the land above would be brown and barren, 
without even a moss or lichen growing on it. Upon the sands 
at his feet might lie a dead jelly-fish or Trilobite, or, perhaps, a 
delicate transparent shell thrown up by the waves ; but they would 
be rarely seen, and the great ocean, although really swarming with 
minute life, would to the naked eye appear tenantless. 
Did Plants Precede Animals ?—It is generally supposed that 
plants must have preceded animals; for they alone are able to 
decompose the carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere, and thus furnish 
the carbo-hydrates and proteids on which animals feed. Or, in 
other words, plants must have preceded animals because they 
alone can live on mineral substances. But this supposition Jands 
us in the difficulty of having to assume that the very first organism 
contained chlorophyll, which is necessary for the formation of 
protoplasm, but which is itself a product of protoplasm. This 
difficulty would be overcome if we could suppose that the primeval 
ocean, in which the first organisms appeared, contained, in addi- 
tion to its present salts, mineral hydro-carbons which would slowly 
oxidise and supply the organisms with food without the necessity of 
decomposing carbon-dioxide. Now Professor H. Moissan has shown 
that much, if not all, of the carbon of the earth existed at first as 
metallic carbides, many of which are decomposed by water at 
ordinary temperatures, and yield hydro-carbons and hydrogen. 
Most of the hydro-carbons thus obtained are gaseous (acetylene and 
marsh-gas) ; but in some cases both liquid and solid hydro-carbons 
are formed abundantly.* The gases would be partly taken up by 
the water, while the liquid and solid forms would float on the 
surface, and if converted into carbo-hydrates may have served as 
food for the first organisms. It is, therefore, quite possible to 
suppose that protoplasm capable of secreting chlorophyll was a 
later development, when the supply of miner al hydro-carbons was 
getting exhausted, and consequently the first. organisms may have 
been animals. 
And now let me say a word about the origin of life itself. 
We have seen that it is highly probable that the first living 
organisms were evolved near the surface of a warm ocean, which 
contained abundance of carbo-hydrates and atmospheric air in 
solution, and which was agitated by the wind and other meteoro- 
logical agencies—conditions which it would not be difficult to 
reproduce in the laboratory—and we may safely assume that 
the first protoplasm was not so complicated a substance as it 
has since become. Perhaps this does not help us much towards a 
* Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, vol. 60, p. 156. 
