EVOLUTIOX OF CHEMISM. gy 



derivative. But what is this primordial sub- 

 stance? Ether, we would say, though this is 

 as yet far-off conjecture ether itself being- 

 still at large, never having been caught and 

 caged by science. Still it is worth while to 

 note the intense stress of the time upon this 

 inorganic evolution as the due counterpart 

 to organic evolution, which so illumines the 

 name and work of Darwin, even if he was not 







the beginner thereof. 



The hydrogen of terrestrial water, which 

 enters so largely into animal and vegetable 

 life, has thus a very hoary ancestry, reach- 

 ing back seemingly to the first stage of vis- 

 ible stellar evolution, to the time when our 

 sun was in the thermal condition of the very 

 hottest stars of the firmament (the two in 

 Argo, according to Lockyer, against whose 

 views, it should be added, there is consider- 

 able protest). Oxygen appears later, in the 

 group represented by the star Alnitam, very 

 faintly at first. These two elements, how- 

 ever, do not chemically unite on any star 

 seemingly; not till the earth has been ejected 

 by the sun and has cooled down toward the 



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thermal life-scale, does water appear in its 

 three forms, two of which, the solid and the 

 vapor, almost mark the bounds of vital exist- 

 ence. Such is the remote genealogy of the 

 liquid we thoughtlessly sip; it is the chief 



