THE EARTH'S PROGRESS. 183 



eternity of the past, to grapple with the present, or encoun- 

 ter the retributions of the eternity" which is to come. This 

 was the era of gigantic vegetable growth, and it had its 

 uses ^ for it was preparing the way for higher and more 

 complicated existences. As the gases that surrounded the 

 earth became consolidated into vegetation, as this stupen- 

 dous growth decomposed the noxious atmosphere, drawing 

 from it its grosser particles and working them up into solid 

 matter, extracting from it what was fatal to animal life, this 

 earth entered upon another era of its progress. 



"Animal life made its appearance. It was weak and 

 feeble at first, but a step removed from vegetable matter. 

 The molusca, the polypi, and the rudest forms of fishes, 

 were, beyond question, the first of living things. Science 

 demonstrates that the water brought forth the first creations 

 endowed with animal vitality. How long this era continued 

 no man can tell. Then came the amphibiae, gigantic animals 

 of the Ihsard kind ; the sauruses, that could reach with their 

 long necks and ponderous jaws across a street and pick up a 

 man, if street and man there had been. Then came land 

 animals, monstrous in growth, by the side of which the 

 elephant dwindles to the diminutive stature of the dormouse. 

 In all these advances, was a succession of steps, mounting 

 higher and higher, in complication of structure, each more 

 perfect in organism than its predecessor. Vegetation itself 

 became more complicated, and as it approached perfection 

 lost its gigantic growth. Solidarity, compactness in all 

 things, became the order of nature ; the atmosphere sur- 



