178 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS y 



the period at which life originated, or will assert 

 more than the extreme probability that such 

 origin was a long way antecedent to any traces of 

 life at present known ? What physical geologist 

 will affirm that he knows when dry land began to 

 exist, or will say more than that it was probably 

 very much earlier than any extant direct evidence 

 of terrestrial conditions indicates ? 



I think I know pretty well the answers which 

 the authorities quoted by Mr. Gladstone would 

 give to these questions ; but I leave it to them to 

 give them if they think fit. 



If I ventured to speculate on the matter at all, 

 I should say it is by no means certain that sea is 

 older than dry land, inasmuch as a solid terrestrial 

 surface may very well have existed before the 

 earth was cool enough to allow of the existence of 

 fluid water. And, in this case, dry land may 

 have existed before the sea. As to the first 

 appearance of life, the whole argument of analogy, 

 whatever it may be worth in such a case, is in 

 favour of the absence of living beings until long 

 after the hot water seas had constituted them- 

 selves ; and of the subsequent appearance of 

 aquatic before terrestrial forms of life. But 

 whether these "protoplasts" would, if we could 

 examine them, be reckoned among the lowest 

 microscopic algaB, or fungi ; or among those doubt- 

 ful organisms which lie in the debatable land 

 between animals and plants, is, in my judgment, 



