146 SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 



animal and vegetable life became possible ; probably 

 both soon appeared. The beginning of organic 

 life on the Earth is usually dated about forty million 

 years ago. The first forms of life were low marine 

 forms — foraminifera, amoebae, sponges, and such- 

 like, and only a hundred thousand, or at most 

 three hundred thousand, years ago man appeared. 

 Between the appearance of foraminifera and the 

 appearance of man many strange creatures lived. 

 For about six million years the ichthyosaurus, 

 dinosaurus, plesiosaurus, and such-like monstros- 

 ities flourished ; and even within the last three 

 hundred thousand years mammoths and woolly 

 rhinoceroses trotted about Europe. 



The development of organic life is the most 

 wonderful feature of the Earth. Probably on 

 none of the other planets of our system are there 

 trees and flowers, and birds and beasts. Even 

 the Moon, daughter of the Earth, has no organic 

 life. So many are the conditions required for 

 organic life, as we know it, that some hold that 

 only on the world does animal and vegetable life 

 exist, and it is quite possible that that is so. Still, 

 when we think of the millions and millions of 

 planets in space, and when we remember that they 

 have been made by the same processes as the Earth, 

 out of the same atoms, it is strange if none of 

 them have been given conditions so similar to the 



