32 THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN. 



not risen witli tlie dawn might suppose, since with its 

 apparently small beginnings of life it is almost as far 

 removed from the Eozoon reefs of the early Lauren- 

 tian on the one hand, as it is from the modern period 

 on the other. The dawn of life seems to have been 

 a very slow and protracted process, and it may have 

 required as long a time between the first appearance 

 of Eozoon and the first of those primordial Trilobites 

 which -the next period will introduce to our notice, 

 -as between these and the advent of Adam. Perhaps 

 no lesson is more instructive than this as to the length 

 of the working days of the Almighty. 



Another lesson lies ready for us in these same facts. 

 Theoretically, plants should have preceded animals; 

 and this also is the assertion of the first chapter of 

 Genesis ; but the oldest fossil certainly known to us 

 is an animal. What if there were still earlier plants, 

 whose remains are still to be discovered ? For my 

 own part, I can see no reason to despair of the 

 discovery of an Eophytic period preceding the Eozoic; 

 perhaps preceding it through ages of duration to us 

 almost immeasurable, though still within the possible 

 time of the existence of the crust of the earth. It 

 is even possible that in a warm and humid condition 

 of the atmosphere, before it had been caused " to 

 rain upon the earth,^^ and when dense '^ mists as- 

 cended from the earth and watered the whole surface 

 of the ground,^^* vegetation may have attained to a 



* Genesis ii. 5. For a description of this Eophytic period of 

 Genesis, see the Author's " Archaia," p-. 160 et seq. 



