CHAPTEE IV 



THE ORIGIN, CLASSIFICATION, AND IDENTIFICATION 

 OF MICROBES 



SCIENTISTS and non-scientists are agreed that there 

 was a lifeless period in the history of the earth 

 therefore that life had a beginning. But when, 

 where, and how did life begin? 'As to the time, 

 there is no evidence whatever. Life is enormously 

 older than any record of it. Even the higher forms 

 were developed long before the periods in which we 

 first find their remains. As to the place, probably 

 in the polar regions, as Buffon suggested in his 

 Epoques de la Nature. The earth being a cooling 

 globe, those regions would be the earliest to reach a 

 temperature under which life is possible.' During 

 the past twenty years or so, Buffon's theory has 

 been supported by Comte de Saporta * and others ; 

 and it is highly probable that in the earliest zoic 

 epochs (especially the north polar) regions of the 

 earth were of a hot and humid nature. Moisture 

 and heat are essential to life ; therefore life had its 

 beginnings in water. 2 It is probable that lowly 

 plants (possibly microbes) were the first organised 



1 UAncienne, Vtg&ation Polaire. 



2 See Professor Moseley in Nature, September 3, 1885. 



