32 LIFE IN THE PRIMITIVE OCEAN 



this was slowly shaped into living units. This 

 particular evolution must have taken ages. There 

 was no more a "first" living thing than there was a 

 "first" man. Many difficulties will be avoided if we 

 bear in mind the extremely slow and gradual nature 

 of these evolutions. 



The next great point was the division of early life 

 into plant and animal. There is really no essential 

 difference between the two. They are made of, sub- 

 stantially, the same plasm, and in the lower circles of 

 life to-day it is often impossible to say whether a 

 living thing is a plant or an animal. But some of 

 the early inhabitants continued to feed on inorganic 

 matter — the chemicals in the soil — and this is mainly 

 what we mean by a "plant" of vegetal organism. 

 As the soil holds the chemicals they need practically 

 everywhere, they do not, as a rule, require locomotive 

 organs. They "take root." And as sensitiveness is 

 of no use to stationary beings, they do not develop 

 sense organs. Thus you get the evolution of a plant- 

 world. The earliest, of course, floated in the water; 

 but some took root in the soil at the bottom of the 

 ocean, and in time great thickets of giant sea-weeds 

 arose. We will trace these to the land in the next 

 chapter. 



Some of the early living things formed the habit of 

 devouring their neighbours, instead of building up 

 plasm out of inorganic matter. This is the beginning 

 of the animal. It is quite plain that this means a 



