WHAT MAY BE LEARNED FROM EOZOON 1 59 



ing conditions more favourable to higher life in the future. 

 Our experience of the modern world shows us that all these 

 conditions can be better fulfilled by the Protozoa than by any 

 other creatures. They can live now equally in those great 

 depths of ocean where the conditions are most unfavourable 

 to other forms of life, and in tepid unhealthy pools overstocked 

 with vegetable matter in a state of putridity. They form a 

 most suitable basis for higher forms of life. They have re- 

 markable powers of removing mineral matters from the waters 

 and of fixing them in solid forms. So, in the fitness of things, 

 a gigantic Foraminifer is just what we need, and after it has 

 spread itself over the mud and rock of the primeval seas, and 

 built up extensive reefs therein, other animals may be intro- 

 duced, capable of feeding on it, or of sheltering themselves in 

 its stony masses, and thus we have the appropriate dawn of 

 animal life. 



But what are we to say of the cause of this new series of 

 facts, so wonderfully superimposed upon the merely vegetable 

 and mineral ? Must it remain to us as an act of creation, or 

 was it derived from some pre-existing matter in which it had 

 been potentially present ? Science fails to inform us, but con- 

 jectural " phylogeny " steps in and takes its place. Haeckel, 

 the prophet of this new philosophy, waves his magic wand, 

 and simple masses of sarcode spring from inorganic matter, 

 and form diffused sheets of sea slime, from which are in time 

 separated distinct amoeboid and foraminiferal forms. Ex- 

 perience, however, gives us no facts whereon to build this 

 supposition, and it remains neither more nor less scientific or 

 certain than that old fancy of the Egyptians, which derived 

 animals from the fertile mud of the Nile. 



If we fail to learn anything of the origin of Eozoon, and if 

 its life processes are just as inscrutable as those of higher 

 creatures, we can at least enquire as to its history in geolo- 

 logical time. In this respect we find, in the first place, that 



