3 



RIVER OF LIFE 



THE peoples whose cities line the River's banks, the pio- 

 neers who ventured into the unknown sea in vain search 

 of a passage to the Orient, the birds flying above and the fish 

 swimming beneath its waters, all have a close kinship with the 

 Ocean, for it was here that life itself began, and it is in the 

 ancient sea floors over which the Atlantic waters once flowed 

 that we read the story. Millions of years have passed and there 

 have been many steps and changes of evolution since the first 

 fish-like animal left the security of water for life on land. A 

 far greater period separates us from the chance microscopic 

 event whereby an aggregation of molecules first took on the 

 new properties of life which accompanied their new pattern 

 of organization. Yet we still retain many evidences in our 

 bodies of our former shapes and of our former submarine ex- 

 istence. Not only does the human embryo, at various stages of 

 its growth, possess modified gill slits and other reminders of 

 the fishlike stages of past evolution, and not only does the 

 human embr^'o live in an amniotic sea of its own, but it may 

 even be said that, in a sense, the River still flows in the blood- 

 stream of man. 



Human blood, in common with that of other vertebrates, 

 still has the same ratio of dissolved salts as the ocean water, 

 though in lower concentration. This is no coincidence. Marine 



38 



