EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY 



things, yet it is perfectly compatible with the wis- 

 dom of past biology. 



We have already considered the nebular theo- 

 ry, which asserts that the solar system has been 

 evolved from a nebula a cloud of gas such, 

 though much smaller, as you may see any winter 

 evening in the sword of Orion. When, in its turn, 

 the embryo earth was cast off from this nebula and 

 began to cool, there came a time when the water, 

 till then filling the atmosphere in the form of va- 

 por, was precipitated and formed the oceans. The 

 famous Comte de Buffon thought that life probably 

 began in the ocean probably in the polar oceans, 

 which would be the first to cool; and, only the 

 other day, an ingenious Frenchman traced a re- 

 semblance between our body-fluids as to saline 

 composition, etc. and sea - water, thus lending 

 some color to his great countryman's hypothesis. 

 Indeed, it appears from this Frenchman's paper 

 that we may look upon the human form divine 

 as none other than a peripatetic aquarium. True 

 to their ancestor's original environment as- 

 suming Buffon's guess to be correct the polar 

 sea- water of many millions of years ago, our body- 

 cells are now bathed in fluids which have little 

 varied in that long period. When, at some inter- 

 vening date, certain enterprising creatures ventured 

 to make a bid for life upon terra firma, the cells 

 of which they were composed naturally continued 

 to prefer the old medium, and the preference has 

 been maintained and is gratified in us to-day. 

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