74 THE PHYSICAL KINSHIP 



, evolution have always been those with the least 

 S information about it. But the evidence is accu- 

 mulating so rapidly, and is being drawn up in such 

 unanswerable array, that, if it is not already the 

 case, it will not be many years before it will be an 

 intellectual reproach for anyone to discredit, or to 

 be known to have discredited, this splendid and 

 inspiring revelation. 



X. The Genealogfy of Animals. 



Life originated in the sea, and for an immense 

 period of time after it commenced it was confined 

 to the place of its origin. The civilisations of the 

 earth were for many millions of years exclusively 

 aquatic. It has, indeed, been estimated that the 

 time required by the life process in getting out of 

 the water — that is, that the time consumed in 

 elaborating the first species of land animals — was 

 much longer than the time which has elapsed 

 since then. I presume that during a large part of 

 this early period it would have seemed to one 

 living at that time extremely doubtful whether 

 there would ever be on the earth any other kinds 

 of life than the aquatic. And if those who to-day 

 weave the fashionable fabrics of human philosophy, 

 and who know nothing about anything outside the 

 thin edge of the present, had been back there, 

 they would no doubt have declared confidently, as 

 they looked upon the naked continents and the 

 uninhabited air and the sea teeming with its 

 peculiar faunas, that life upon solids or in gases, 

 life anywhere, in fact, except in the sea, where it 



