68 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION 



mind, and however useful as helping to fix the laws 

 and limits of the variation of living beings, have not 

 brought us perceptibly nearer to the solution of the 

 great question, still less to the possibility of solving 

 it without the power and divinity that lie behind it. 

 It is of some value, however, to understand the 

 nature of a question of this kind, even if we cannot 

 answer it, and we may perhaps best attain to this 

 kind of information by considering some plain and 



simple cases. 



Parry, in his Arctic voyages, describes and i 

 a remarkable phenomenon witnessed in Greenland 

 and in other polar and alpine regions, and also to a 

 modified extent in more temperate climates that of 

 the growth of the red snow-plant (Protococcus 



Large tracts of melting snow on the Greenla 

 coast are sometimes seen to be coloured with this 

 humble plant, giving to the previously pure snow a 

 bright blood-red tint, and often penetrating to some 

 depth into its mass. Parry informs us that on taking 

 a bucketful of this snow on board his ship, and 

 allowing it to melt, the water was seen to contain a 

 delicate gelatinous matter full of minute 

 which, under the microscope, resolved themselves 

 into globular cells with a thin transparent outer wall, 

 containing a colourless liquid sap, within which was 



&amp;gt; Sometimes referred to genus Palmella or to Chlamydococcus, and 

 included by Bennett in his family Protococcace*. 



