194 INDOOR STUDIES 



is true, it is pretty certain that there must have 

 been life on the globe long before that date. Our 

 tree must have started as a single shoot, but this 

 single stem, our iirst parent form, has not been 

 found. The biologist is convinced that the very- 

 first forms of life were soft and very perishable, and 

 that therefore no record of them could be preserved 

 in the sedimentary rocks. But the later forms, 

 which led up to and were the parents of those which 

 emerge into view in the Silurian age, must have 

 been capable of fossilization. A record of them 

 doubtless exists somewhere, and may, in time, be 

 brought to light. Darwin thought the record was 

 probably in the rocks beneath the sea, as it is cer- 

 tain the sea and the land have changed places. Or 

 the record may be in the Arctic regions, where 

 some naturalists believe life first began, seeing this 

 part of the earth's surface would be the first to cool 

 and become of a temperature that admitted of ani- 

 mal life. In any case but a mere fraction of the 

 record — hardly more than a few pages out of many 

 large volumes — is accessible and has been subject 

 to scrutiny. The roots and trunk of our tree must 

 be assumed to have existed. We assume that lan- 

 guage began in rude sounds and grunts and signs, 

 as we see it begin in a child, though of course no 

 record of them could be preserved, and that it has 

 developed from these into the marvelous structure 

 which we now behold, branching and refining and 

 specializing almost endlessly. 



In the Silurian age, then, we strike the top of 



