4 THE BRITISH NATURE BOOK 



plants and animals of to-day are found so beautifully fitted for the lives they 

 have to lead ; and as you study this book, and go on to observe and study 

 Nature, you will be constantly coming across remarkable illustrations of this 

 law of life. 



Of course much that Darwin suggested has since been discovered to be 

 untenable. A very great deal more has been discovered in the last forty or 

 fifty years ; and if he were with us to-day, he would be the first to acknow- 

 ledge that while " natural selection " is part of the truth, it is not the whole 

 explanation of the facts. 



But now, bearing this explanation in mind, we can go a step farther. How 

 does a baby grow into a man ? We know how a house is built, brick by 

 brick being added from outside ; but a baby grows by a force from within, 

 in the same way as a seed becomes a plant. There is a power within the seed, 

 a power of self-creation, so vital and strong that it grows at last into the per- 

 fect plant. Now what is true of a single seed or a single baby is equally true 

 of life as a whole. Even the highest forms of life have grown or evolved, 

 during millions of years, from the few simple forms (perhaps only one) into 

 which God " in the beginning " breathed the breath of life. In other words, 

 God put His power of creation into the first living things upon this earth, and 

 ever since it is that power which has gone on working in the world the power 

 at work in the seed to-day, as in the new-born baby. 



We should like to know all the history that lies behind the evolution of 

 the living things on the earth to-day ; but that is impossible. Part of it we 

 know ; Science is still at work puzzling out the difficulties and problems. 

 By examining and comparing the bodies of living things much has been dis- 

 covered. Much has been told us by the earth itself as to its past history. The 

 fossils, the buried remains of strange animals and reptiles, the discovery of 

 the traces of prehistoric man all these things have been pages in the book of 

 knowledge which wise men have learned to read; but much has still to be 

 discovered : the wise man of to-day confesses that " all he knows is that he 

 knows nothing " there is so much more to learn. 



But at least this much can be said to be known : that after a time, in the 

 far-away history of life, the realm of living things divided into two parts 

 the Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms. There were, and there still are, living 

 things that are neither animal nor vegetable ; some of them are mentioned 

 in this book. But the plants, as a whole, went on evolving in their own 

 way, producing at last the highest possible kind the tree ; and the animals 

 evolved, also, in their own way. 



To-day we can divide all animals into two main groups those that 

 have backbones (Vertebrates) and those that have none (Invertebrates). No 

 doubt exists to-day that those without backbones came first, and that the 

 others were evolved from them. There are still a few animals left with only 

 traces of a backbone, and they help us to understand how it came to be 

 evolved. 



