THE GENEALOGY OF ANIMALS 75 



had always existed, and to which alone it was 

 adapted, was absolutely, and would be forever, 

 impossible ; and that feathered fishes and fishes 

 with the power to run and skip, and especially 

 * sharks ' competent to walk on one end and jabber 

 with the other, were unthinkable nonsense. Life 

 originated in the sea for the same reason that the 

 first of the series of so-called * civilisations ' which 

 have appeared in human history sprang from the 

 alluvium of the Euphrates and the Nile, because 

 the conditions for bringing life into existence were 

 here the most favourable. The atmosphere was 

 incompetent to perform such a task as the invent- 

 ing oi protoplasm, and there was no land above the 

 oceans. 



The first forms of life were one-celled — simple, 

 jelly-like dots of almost homogeneous plasm — the 

 protozoa. These primitive organisms were the 

 common grandparents of all beings. From them 

 evolved, through infinite travail and suffering, all 

 of the orders, families, species, and varieties of 

 animals that to-day live on the earth, and all 

 those that have in the past lived and passed 

 away. By the multiplication and specialisation 

 of cells, and the formation of cell aggregates, the 

 sponges, celenterates, and flat worms were de- 

 veloped from the protozoa.* The connecting links 

 between the one-celled and the many-celled animals 

 consist of a series of colonial forms of increasing 

 size and complexity, some of which may be 

 found in every roadside ditch and pool, while 



* See ' Genealogy of Animals,' p. 331. 



