12 WORLD-MAKING 



any sign of animal life, but I saw a vast profusion of what 

 might be plants, but not like those of this world. ^ These were 

 trees of monstrous stature, and their leaves, which were of 

 great size and shaped like fronds of seaweeds, were not usually 

 green, but variegated with red, crimson and orange. The sur- 

 face of the land looked like beds of gigantic specimens of 

 Colias and similar variegated-leaved plants, the whole present- 

 ing a most gorgeous yet grotesque spectacle. " This," said my 

 guide, " is the primitive vegetation which clothes each of the 

 planets in its youthful state. The earth was once so clothed, 

 in the time when vegetable life alone existed, and there were 

 no animals to prey upon it, and when the earth was, like the 

 world you now look upon, a paradise of plants ; for all things 

 in nature are at first in their best estate. This vegetation is 

 known to you on the earth only by the Carbon and Graphite 

 buried in your oldest rocks. It still lingers on your neighbour 

 Mars,^ which has, however, almost passed beyond this stage, 

 and we are looking forward before long to see a still more 

 gigantic though paler development of it in altogether novel 

 shapes on the great continents that are being formed on the 

 surface of Jupiter. But look again." And time being again 

 annihilated, I saw the same world, now destitute of any 

 luminous envelope, with a few dark clouds in its atmosphere, 

 and presenting just the same appearance which I would sup- 

 pose our earth to present to an astronomer viewing it with a 

 powerful telescope from the moon. " Here we are at home 

 again," said my guide; "good-bye." I found myself nodding 

 over my table, and that my pen had just dropped from my 

 hand, making a large blot on my paper. My dream, however, 



* We shall see farther on that there is reason to believe that the primitive 

 land vegetation was more different from that of the Devonian and Carboni- 

 lerous than it is from that of the present day. 



'^ Mars is probably a stage behind the earth in its development, and the 

 ruddy hue of its continents would seem to bs due to some organic covering. 



