A BACKWARD GLANCE 



as a result of specialization, could see better, move 

 more readilj% digest more easily, than the separate 

 elements which went into it. 



And so, through the early pictures of our reel, 

 there would be spread before us the development 

 of the little simple cell into more and more 

 complex forms of life — first vegetable, then animal 

 — into everything, finally, that lives and grows 

 about us today — into us, ourselves. 



* * * * A 



In an actual motion picture as it is thrown 

 on the screen, it is only the quick progressive 

 succession of the pictures that makes us realize 

 the sense of motion. 



If we were to detach and examine a single film 

 from the reel, it would show no movement. It 

 would be as stationary and as fixed as a child's 

 first kodak snapshot. 



In the motion picture of Nature's evolution, 

 the world, as we see it about us in our lifetime, 

 represents but a single snapshot, detached from 

 those which have preceded it and from those 

 which are to succeed it. 



And so, some of us — too many of us — not 

 confronted with the same necessity which irre- 

 sistibly leads the plant student into the study of 

 these forces — viewing only the single, apparently 

 unmoving picture before us, have concluded that 



[287] 



