METHODS OF LIFE'S GENESIS. 35 



tal kingdoms. Such deviations from the 

 normal type have long been known to the 

 gardener and the breeder who have given 

 them the popular name of " sports, " which, 

 from being once deemed mere freaks of Na- 

 ture, have now become a recognized part of 

 the theory of the origin of species ; so the 

 genesis of Life has traveled back and taken 

 up again Heterogenesis. 



Here it may be added that man in his orig- 

 inal separation fr,om his ape-like ancestor has 

 been considered a ' ' sport ' ' by certain anthro- 

 pologists. That is, far back somewhere in the 

 Tertiary Period the common progenitor of 

 ape and man brought forth a remarkable devi- 

 ation from his own regular type which then 

 and there bifurcated for all future time into 

 the simian and human lines of evolution, as 

 we see them,today. From this point of view 

 we have to regard ourselves as having orig- 

 inated in the "sport" of a pithecoid a fact 

 of ancestral as well as scientific interest, 

 though its truth is questioned. 



Truly the time reflects itself not only in the 

 science of Nature, but in Nature herself, who 

 is found to possess all our human tendencies, 

 though in a very remote, implicit way. Even 

 the plant seems to have its reformers, its bar- 

 rier-bursters, its prophets leading it out of 

 the old into the new. That famous little pri 



