WHAT MAY BE LEARNED FROM EOZOON 157 



for effecting great material results through the union of in- 

 dividuals, we perceive that we have to do, not with a low 

 condition of those powers which we designate life, but with 

 their manifestation through the means of a simple organism ; 

 and this in a degree of perfection which we, from our point of 

 view,, would have in the first instance supposed impossible. 



If we imagine a world altogether destitute of life, we still 

 might have geological formations in progress. Not only would 

 volcanoes belch forth their liquid lavas and their stones and 

 ashes, but the waves and currents of the ocean and the rains 

 and streams on the land, with the ceaseless decomposing action 

 of the carbonic acid of the atmosphere, would be piling up 

 mud, sand, and pebbles in the sea. There might even be 

 some formation of limestone taking place where springs charged 

 with bicarbonate of lime were oozing out on the land or the 

 bottom of the waters. But in such a world all the carbon 

 would be in the state of carbon dioxide, and all the limestone 

 would either be diffused 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 probability would say 

 in the latter. 1 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 



1 A recent writer (Simroth) has, however, undertaken to maintain the 

 thesis that land life preceded that in the sea. It is unnecessary to say that 

 he is an evolutionist, influenced by the necessity laid upon that philosophy 

 to deduce whales, seals, etc., from land animals. 



