\ 



HOW PLANTS BEGAN TO BE. 23 



you are thinking of large and very advanced 

 plants, like a sweet-pea or a potato. But you 

 must remember that we are dealing here with 

 very early and simple plants, and that these 

 early and simple plants consist for the most part 

 of tiny greeT? pij,tfts f floating free in water. They 

 are generally invisible to the naked eye, and are 

 in point of fact mere specks of green jelly. Yet 

 it is from such insignificant atoms as these that 

 the great forest trees derive their origin, through 

 a long line of ancestors ; and if we wish to 

 understand the larger and more developed 

 plants, we must begin by understanding these 

 their simple relations. 



Very early plants, then, floated free in water ; 

 and there is reason to believe that for a con- 

 siderable period in the beginnings of our world 

 there was no dry land at all ; the whole surface 

 of the globe was covered by one boundless ocean. 

 At any rate, most of the simplest and earliest 

 forms of life now remaining to us inhabit the 

 water, either fresh or salt ; while almost all the 

 higher and nobler plants and animals are dwellers 

 on land. Hence it is not unreasonable to con- 

 clude that life began in the sea, and only 

 gradually spread itself over the islands and 

 continents. 



Floating jelly-like plants would readily reach 

 a size at which it would be convenient for them 

 to split in two or rather, at which it would be 

 difficult for them to hold together ; and most 



:very small floating plants do^to this, jj^Y continue \ 

 to grow, up to a certain point, and then divide '] 

 into two similar and equal portions. This is the | 



