WHERE DID LIFE BEGIN? 75 



in most latitudes where any life is possible, so it is very evident that 

 plants and animals, as we now see them, could not have made their 

 advent upon the earth universally or simultaneously. Every geologi- 

 cal fact contradicts both suppositions. Besides, to allege either is to 

 claim, first, that all parts of the earth became habitable, for some form 

 of life, at the same time, which is scarcely possible ; and, secondly, 

 such an allegation would do away with the main question of distribu- 

 tion, render superfluous most means of movement, and make it sheer 

 nonsense to talk about the time, methods, and character of the distri- 

 bution of that which had from the beginning been fully distributed. 

 It is much more probable that life made its first advent upon this 

 globe in some favored locality, and not everywhere at once. 



It would seem as axiomatic a proposition as can be made in natural 

 science, that life would make its first appearance on that part of the 

 earth, or on that part of any developing planet, which by climatic and 

 and all other concurrent conditions was first prepared, if not to origi- 

 nate, at least to receive and maintain it. Nothing can be more certain 

 than that it could not make its first appearance on that part, or on any 

 of those parts, wanting these conditions. 



By concurrent conditions of climate or temperature, wherever the 

 phrase is used herein, I mean such currents of air and ocean, such 

 evaporation and condensation of water, such disintegration of rock, 

 such electrical and chemical changes, new combinations, phenomena, 

 and movements as are influenced by or accompany changing climate 

 or temperature, together with all the secondary and remote effects 

 caused thereby. And in speaking of the first appearance of life it 

 matters not, to my mind, whether it was a creation, a development, 

 or a transplantation ; whether it was a lichen on the rock or a monad 

 in the sea ; a single solitary primordial cell, or one molecule of plasmic 

 matter anywhere. This inquiry is not for the causes, methods, char- 

 acter, or extent of first life ; it is simply and only concerning its prob- 

 able primus locus. 



If we are so fortunate as to discover where life began on the earth, 

 it will be safe enough to rest upon the assumption that much, if not 

 all, of the present life on the globe is its legitimate result and outcome. 



Are there, then, any data, any accepted facts touching the condi- 

 tion of our globe antecedent to the advent of plants and animals which 

 would enable us to compare and contrast its past with its present con- 

 dition, and which under known laws would indicate what portion of 

 the earth's surface first became, by temperature, climate, and other 

 concurrent conditions, habitable for life ? Can any reasonable, proba- 

 ble, and still existing cause be discovered occurring in the very center 

 of such first habitable portion which would have dispersed all vegetal 

 and animal life and sent it in equal distribution through all the seas 



