THE BEGINNINGS OF PLANT LIFE 
Animal life among this very first land vegetation must 
have been either entirely absent or extremely primitive. 
There may have been worms, and perhaps some insects like 
the ancestors of the cockroaches. Some scorpions may 
have crawled along the ground. The poverty of the 
land fauna is in striking contrast to the teeming life of 
the ocean, which was full of fish, crustaceans, starfish, 
crawfish, mussels, oysters, jelly-fish, and corals. 
Away from this highly developed and multi-colored 
sea life, the land flora and fauna must have played the 
role of pioneers. Like the frontiersmen of early North 
American history, who left their comfortable homes along 
the Atlantic seaboard or in Europe to take up a life of 
untold hardship in some rude settlement in the Missis¬ 
sippi valley, these plants and animals ventured slowly 
from the coast-line into the valleys and uplands. There 
is a heroic spirit inherent to all organisms, from the most 
primitive animals and plants to man himself, which 
reaches out for new adventures and has an irresistible urge 
to expand into the unknown. This will to master the 
environment is a counterpart of the will, in man alone, 
to understand the unknown in the intellectual and spiritual 
realm. All our progress may be summed up in two 
urges: the physical urge to conquer Nature, and the 
metaphysical urge to comprehend the things of the spirit. 
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