Spirogyra. 



21 



III. 



SPIROGYRA. 



LIFE animates the world of plants as it does 

 that of animals. Low down there is no 

 observable distinction ; one cannot tell 

 whether certain simple creatures are 

 plants or animals. And in the begin- 

 ning there probably was no division of 

 the kind. 



Far, far back, as every one knows, 

 there was probably no physical life at all 

 on the earth. In time the surface of the 

 earth assumed a form favorable to the 

 existence of the new activity — life. ^^''^Sz*:**^ 

 And then life appeared, but not the 

 life that we know; it took countless ages for that 

 to emerge from its simple protoplasmic beginning. 



What the very first forms of life were, we cannot 

 know; we only know that they must have been 

 very simple ; perhaps the beginning was but the 

 formation of a layer of protoplasm with no definite 

 form, such as is yet found in the ocean in some 

 places. Then there may have come into being 

 the single-celled organisms, then the creatures 



