104 BACTERIA AND SOIL FERTILITY 



collision my motion grew more and more violent, until after 

 millions upon millions of years of this tumult, I found myself 

 part of an immensely hot flaming mass of gas, part of an embryo 

 sun. There in the whirl and roar of the elemental flame I re- 

 mained for unthinkable ages, but at last vast thunders beneath 

 and around me made me aware that something tremendous was 

 happening. It was a world — my first world — gradually con- 

 densing out of the fire mist, and the gigantic explosions which 

 occurred from time to time were just seas of boiling rock leaping 

 upwards. I will spare you the account of how I entered into that 

 world and saw it slowly form and develop into a fair planet cov- 

 ered with wonderful swarming masses of living creatures, with 

 great cities filled with busy life, and wonderful civilizations. Nor 

 will I tell you of how that world grew old, and passed into a vast 

 desert, and finally, after wandering for aeons of ages in darkness 

 and silence, burst suddenly forth into flame, the victim of a great 

 cosmical catastrophe, and like a bubble, vanished, exploding into 

 incandescent gas. Nor will I tell you of how, far flung, I fell 

 upon another world, and saw this world too in time perlh; and 

 of how I passed from world to world, and formed part of world 

 after world, wandering in mighty migrations through space, until 

 at last I joined the fire mist from out of which, ultimately, this 

 world of yours condensed amidst titanic convulsions. You will, 

 therefore, see that even before your world began I was old, im- 

 mensely old. I will pass over all this and come to a time quite 

 recent, when I found myself forming part of the molten fire 

 underground. Here I lay for age after age, while the land above 

 me was being eaten away by wind and rain and storm, and was 

 hurried — continent after continent crumbling into ruin — into the 

 great ocean waiting patiently to receive it. Now I was urged 

 upwards by vast forces, slowly, steadily, for thousands of years 

 until I finally was uplifted to form part of a hard, cold rock, 

 which soon reared itself into a mighty cliff, beaten upon by wind 

 and rain and storm. I have a dim recollection of looking out 

 from the cliiF face upon a widespread blue sea filled with strange 

 vast monsters which have long since vanished from the earth. 



