UNDER THE MAPLES 



the world"! The land feels the pull also and 

 would follow if it could. But the mobile clouds 

 go their way, and the aerial ocean makes no sign. 

 The pull of the sun and the moon is upon you and, 

 me also, but we are all unconscious of it. We are 

 bodies too slight to affect the beam of the huge scale. 



VII. THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE 



IT is remarkable, I think, that Professor Osborn, 

 in his "Origin and Evolution of Life," makes no 

 account of the micro-organisms or unicellular lives 

 that are older than the continents, older than the 

 Cambrian rocks, and that have survived unchanged 

 even to our times. I saw in the Grand Canon of 

 the Colorado where they were laid down horizon- 

 tally on the old Azoic or original rocks, as if by the 

 hand of a mason building the foundation of a 

 superstructure. All the vast series of limestone 

 rocks are made up from the skeletons of minute 

 living bodies. Other strata of rocks are made up 

 of the skeletons of diatoms. Some of our polishing 

 powders are made from these rocks. Formed of 

 pure silex, these rocks are made up of the skeletons 

 of organisms of many exquisite forms, Foramini- 

 ferce. The Pyramids are said to be built of rocks 

 formed by these organisms. "No single group of 

 the animal kingdom," says Mr. W. B. Carpenter, 

 "has contributed, or is at present contributing, so 

 largely as has the Foraminiferce to the formation 



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