LEAF AND TENDRIL 



grounds for the belief "that all the chief known 

 constituents of the crust of the earth may have 

 formed part of living bodies ; that they may be the 

 ' ash ' of protoplasm." 



This implies that life first appeared in the sea, and 

 gave rise to untold myriads of minute organisms, 

 that built themselves shells out of the mineral matter 

 held in solution by the water. As these organisms 

 perished, their shells fell to the bottom and formed 

 the sedimentary rocks. In the course of ages these 

 rocks were lifted up above the sea, and their decay 

 and disintegration under the action of the elements 

 formed our soil — our clays, our marls, our green 

 sand — and out of this soil man himself is built up. 



I do not wonder that the Creator found the 

 dust of the earth the right stuff to make Adam of. 

 It was half man already. I can easily believe that 

 his spirit was evoked from the same stuff, that 

 it was latent there, and in due time, under the 

 brooding warmth of the creative energy, awoke to 

 life. 



If matter is eternal, as science leads us to believe, 

 and creation and recreation a never-ending process, 

 then the present world, with all its myriad forms 

 of the organic and the inorganic, is only one of the 

 infinite number of forms that matter must have 

 assumed in past seons. The whole substance of 

 the globe must have gone to the making of other 

 globes such a number of times as no array of fig- 

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