XXVIII 
MAKING A HOME FOR LIFE 
HETHER the earth condensed from a 
whirling ring separated off from a spinning 
nebular mass, whose center formed our sun, or 
whether it began its separate existence as a knot in 
a spiral nebula heaved off from the sun, or whether 
its origin was otherwise, there was a time when it 
passed from being “without form and void” to 
become a dense body with a predominantly metallic 
core and an outer slag of lighter materials. At 
that time, preferably left undated, but many 
millions of years ago, the high temperature excluded 
the possibility of there being upon the earth any- 
thing like the living organisms we know. The time 
for life was not yet, and what we wish to think over 
are some of the preparations (if the word, not quite 
scientific, we fear, be permissible) that made the 
earth fit to be, if not mother of, in any case a 
home for, living creatures. When these eventually 
came to their own, many of them acquired a con- 
siderable toughness, and some a capacity for in- 
surgence, but the present-day delicacy of individual 
beginnings, the tenuity of the germ, the helplessness 
of the infant, remind us of the probable frailty of 
the earliest forms of life. It is interesting to 
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