THE HISTORY OF LIFE 171 



thickness varies everywhere. Nature always abhors 

 the rigid. 



Now comes the important fact. In the first layers of 

 the primary formations, we have records of the creation 

 of low or comparatively humble organisms the traces- 

 of organic life are rare. Later on, we have a greater 

 abundance of forms, the humbler types, however, still 

 preponderating all (except the very lowest) were 

 built up of cells and the product or secretion of cells 

 each cell with its nucleus and its nucleoius, 1 each cell 

 a living organism. In the next era, that is during the 

 time the secondary strata were deposited, we find pine 

 forests and reptiles, and the lowest forms of mammals 

 again all were built up of cells and the secretions of 

 cells all of which had their nucleus and their nucleoius, 

 all cells living individuals. All cells were built up of 

 molecules, all molecules built up of atoms. The next 

 formation, the tertiary formation, denotes an era in 

 which the modern types of forest predominated trees 

 having a true bark and growing from the outside, and 

 a surprising development of the creatures that suckle 

 their young mammals. Arid lastly appears the post- 

 tertiary era, during which many of the present forms 

 of vegetable and animal life, including Man, were 

 created. 2 Each so-called creation was the Evolution 

 of the more complex from the less complex until 

 the most complex of all appeared civilized man. 3 



1 The whole of the remainder of the Book assumes Prof.* Schufer's 

 fundamental deductions to be true. See p. 80. 



2 i.e. sprang into existence. The word "creation" is always 

 used by the Author in this sense. 



3 " The law of progress or of perfecting establishes the exceedingly 

 important fact, on the ground of palasontological experience, that in 



