The Story of Evolution Part 5

The quaint stalked Echinoderm which also we noticed in the Cambrian shallows has now evolved into a more handsome creature, the sea-lily.

The cup-shaped body is now composed of a large number of limy plates, clothed with flesh; the arms are long, tapering, symmetrical, and richly fringed; the stalk advances higher and higher, until the flower-like animal sometimes waves its feathery arms from the top of a flexible pedestal composed of millions of tiny chalk disks. Small forests of these sea-lilies adorn the floor of the Silurian ocean, and their broken and dead frames form whole beds of limestone. The primitive Cystids dwindle and die out in the presence of such powerful compet.i.tors. Of 250 species only a dozen linger in the Silurian strata, though a new and more advanced type--the Blastoid--holds the field for a time. It is the age of the Crinoids or sea-lilies. The starfish, which has abandoned the stalk, does not seem to prosper as yet, and the brittle-star appears.

Their age will come later. No sea-urchins or sea-cuc.u.mbers (which would hardly be preserved) are found as yet. It is precisely the order of appearance which our theory of their evolution demands.

The Brachiopods have pa.s.sed into entirely new and more advanced species in the many advances and retreats of the sh.o.r.es, but the Molluscs show more interesting progress. The commanding group from the start is that of the Molluscs which have "kept their head," the Cephalopods, and their large sh.e.l.ls show a most instructive evolution. The first great representative of the tribe is a straight-sh.e.l.led Cephalopod, which becomes "the tyrant and scavenger of the Silurian ocean" (Chamberlin).

Its tapering, conical sh.e.l.l sometimes runs to a length of fifteen feet, and a diameter of one foot. It would of itself be an important evolutionary factor in the primitive seas, and might explain more than one advance in protective armour or retreat into heavy sh.e.l.ls. As the period advances the sh.e.l.l begins to curve, and at last it forms a close spiral coil. This would be so great an advantage that we are not surprised to find the coiled type (Goniat.i.tes) gain upon and gradually replace the straight-sh.e.l.led types (Orthocerat.i.tes). The Silurian ocean swarms with these great sh.e.l.led Cephalopods, of which the little Nautilus is now the only survivor.

We will not enlarge on the Sponges and Corals, which are slowly advancing toward the higher modern types. Two new and very powerful organisms have appeared, and merit the closest attention. One is the fish, the remote ancestor of the birds and mammals that will one day rule the earth. The other may be the ancestor of the fish itself, or it may be one of the many abortive outcomes and unsuccessful experiments of the stirring life of the time. And while these new types are themselves a result of the great and stimulating changes which we have reviewed and the incessant struggle for food and safety, they in turn enormously quicken the pace of development. The Dreadnought appears in the primitive seas; the effect on the fleets of the world of the evolution of our latest type of battles.h.i.+p gives us a faint idea of the effect, on all the moving population, of the coming of these monsters of the deep.

The age had not lacked incentives to progress; it now obtains a more terrible and far-reaching stimulus.

To understand the situation let us see how the battle of land and sea had proceeded. The Devonian Period had opened with a fresh emergence of the land, especially in Europe, and great inland seas or lakes were left in the hollows. The tincture of iron which gives a red colour to our characteristic Devonian rocks, the Old Red Sandstone, shows us that the sand was deposited in inland waters. The fish had already been developed, and the Devonian rocks show it swarming, in great numbers and variety, in the enclosed seas and round the fringe of the continents.

The first generation was a group of strange creatures, half fish and half Crustacean, which are known as the Ostracoderms. They had large armour-plated heads, which recall the Trilobite, and suggest that they too burrowed in the mud of the sea or (as many think) of the inland lakes, making havoc among the sh.e.l.l-fish, worms, and small Crustacea.

The hind-part of their bodies was remarkably fish-like in structure. But they had no backbone--though we cannot say whether they may not have had a rod of cartilage along the back--and no articulated jaws like the fish. Some regard them as a connecting link between the Crustacea and the fishes, but the general feeling is that they were an abortive development in the direction of the fish. The sharks and other large fishes, which have appeared in the Silurian, easily displace these clumsy and poor-mouthed compet.i.tors One almost thinks of the aeroplane superseding the navigable balloon.

Of the fishes the Arthrodirans dominated the inland seas (apparently), while the sharks commanded the ocean. One of the Arthrodirans, the Dinichthys ("terrible fish"), is the most formidable fish known to science. It measured twenty feet from snout to tail. Its monstrous head, three feet in width, was heavily armoured, and, instead of teeth, its great jaws, two feet in length, were sharpened, and closed over the victim like a gigantic pair of clippers. The strongly plated heads of these fishes were commonly a foot or two feet in width. Life in the waters became more exacting than ever. But the Arthrodirans were unwieldy and sluggish, and had to give way before more progressive types. The toothed shark gradually became the lord of the waters.

The early shark ate, amongst other things, quant.i.ties of Molluscs and Brachiopods. Possibly he began with Crustacea; in any case the practice of crunching sh.e.l.lfish led to a stronger and stronger development of the hard plate which lined his mouth. The p.r.i.c.kles of the plate grew larger and harder, until--as may be seen to-day in the mouth of a young shark--the cavity was lined with teeth. In the bulk of the Devonian sharks these developed into what are significantly called "pavement teeth." They were solid plates of enamel, an inch or an inch and a half in width, with which the monster ground its enormous meals of Molluscs, Crustacea, sea-weed, etc. A new and stimulating element had come into the life of the invertebrate world. Other sharks snapped larger victims, and developed the teeth on the edges of their jaws, to the sacrifice of the others, until we find these teeth in the course of time solid triangular ma.s.ses of enamel, four or five inches long, with saw-like edges. Imagine these terrible mouths--the shears of the Arthrodiran, and the grindstones and terrible crescents of the giant sharks--moving speedily amongst the crowded inhabitants of the waters, and it is easy to see what a stimulus to the attainment of speed and of protective devices was given to the whole world of the time.

What was the origin of the fish? Here we are in much the same position as we were in regard to the origin of the higher Invertebrates. Once the fish plainly appears upon the scene it is found to be undergoing a process of evolution like all other animals. The vast majority of our fishes have bony frames (or are Teleosts); the fishes of the Devonian age nearly all have frames of cartilage, and we know from embryonic development that cartilage is the first stage in the formation of bone.

In the teeth and tails, also, we find a gradual evolution toward the higher types. But the earlier record is, for reasons I have already given, obscure; and as my purpose is rather to discover the agencies of evolution than to strain slender evidence in drawing up pedigrees, I need only make brief reference to the state of the problem.

Until comparatively recent times the animal world fell into two clearly distinct halves, the Vertebrates and the Invertebrates. There were several anatomical differences between the two provinces, but the most conspicuous and most puzzling was the backbone. Nowhere in living nature or in the rocks was any intermediate type known between the backboned and the non-backboned animal. In the course of the nineteenth century, however, several animals of an intermediate type were found. The sea-squirt has in its early youth the line of cartilage through the body which, in embryonic development, represents the first stage of the backbone; the lancelet and the Appendicularia have a rod of cartilage throughout life; the "acorn-headed worm" shows traces of it. These are regarded as surviving specimens of various groups of animals which, in early times, fell between the Invertebrate and Vertebrate worlds, and ill.u.s.trate the transition.

With their aid a genealogical tree was constructed for the fish. It was a.s.sumed that some Cambrian or Silurian Annelid obtained this stiffening rod of cartilage. The next advantage--we have seen it in many cases--was to combine flexibility with support. The rod was divided into connected sections (vertebrae), and hardened into bone. Besides stiffening the body, it provided a valuable shelter for the spinal cord, and its upper part expanded into a box to enclose the brain. The fins were formed of folds of skin which were thrown off at the sides and on the back, as the animal wriggled through the water. They were of use in swimming, and sections of them were stiffened with rods of cartilage, and became the pairs of fins. Gill slits (as in some of the highest worms) appeared in the throat, the mouth was improved by the formation of jaws, and--the worm culminated in the shark.

Some experts think, however, that the fish developed directly from a Crustacean, and hold that the Ostracoderms are the connecting link. A close discussion of the anatomical details would be out of place here, [*] and the question remains open for the present. Directly or indirectly, the fish is a descendant of some Archaean Annelid. It is most probable that the shark was the first true fish-type. There are unrecognisable fragments of fishes in the Ordovician and Silurian rocks, but the first complete skeletons (Lanarkia, etc.) are of small shark- like creatures, and the low organisation of the group to which the shark belongs, the Elasmobranchs, makes it probable that they are the most primitive. Other remains (Palaeospondylus) show that the fish-like lampreys had already developed.

* See, especially, Dr. Gaskell's "Origin of Vertebrates"

(1908).

Two groups were developed from the primitive fish, which have great interest for us. Our next step, in fact, is to trace the pa.s.sage of the fish from the water to the land, one of the most momentous chapters in the story of life. To that incident or accident of primitive life we owe our own existence and the whole development of the higher types of animals. The advance of natural history in modern times has made this pa.s.sage to the land easy to understand. Not only does every frog reenact it in the course of its development, but we know many fishes that can live out of water. There is an Indian perch--called the "climbing perch," but it has only once been seen by a European to climb a tree--which crosses the fields in search of another pool, when its own pool is evaporating. An Indian marine fish (Periophthalmus) remains hunting on the sh.o.r.e when the tide goes out. More important still, several fishes have lungs as well as gills. The Ceratodus of certain Queensland rivers has one lung; though, I was told by the experts in Queensland, it is not a "mud-fish," and never lives in dry mud. However, the Protopterus of Africa and the Lepidosiren of South America have two lungs, as well as gills, and can live either in water or, in the dry season, on land.

When the skeletons of fishes of the Ceratodus type were discovered in the Devonian rocks, it was felt that we had found the fish-ancestor of the land Vertebrates, but a closer anatomical examination has made this doubtful. The Devonian lung-fish has characters which do not seem to lead on to the Amphibia. The same general cause probably led many groups to leave the water, or adapt themselves to living on land as well as in water, and the abundant Dipoi or Dipneusts ("double-breathers") of the Devonian lakes are one of the chief of these groups, which have luckily left descendants to our time. The ancestors of the Amphibia are generally sought amongst the Crossopterygii, a very large group of fishes in Devonian times, with very few representatives to-day.

It is more profitable to investigate the process itself than to make a precarious search for the actual fish, and, fortunately, this inquiry is more hopeful. The remains that we find make it probable that the fish left the water about the beginning of the Devonian or the end of the Silurian. Now this period coincides with two circ.u.mstances which throw a complete light on the step; one is the great rise of the land, catching myriads of fishes in enclosed inland seas, and the other is the appearance of formidable carnivores in the waters. As the seas evaporated [*] and the great carnage proceeded, the land, which was already covered with plants and inhabited by insects, offered a safe retreat for such as could adopt it. Emigration to the land had been going on for ages, as we shall see. Curious as it must seem to the inexpert, the fishes, or some of them, were better prepared than most other animals to leave the water. The chief requirement was a lung, or interior bag, by which the air could be brought into close contact with the absorbing blood vessels. Such a bag, broadly speaking, most of the fishes possess in their floating-bladder: a bag of gas, by compressing or expanding which they alter their specific gravity in the water. In some fishes it is double; in some it is supplied with blood-vessels; in some it is connected by a tube with the gullet, and therefore with the atmosphere.

* It is now usually thought that the inland seas were the theatre of the pa.s.sage to land. I must point out, however, that the wide distribution of our Dipneusts, in Australia, tropical Africa, and South America, suggests that they were marine though they now live in fresh water. But we shall see that a continent united the three regions at one time, and it may afford some explanation.

Thus we get very clear suggestions of the transition from water to land.

We must, of course, conceive it as a slow and gradual adaptation.

At first there may have been a rough contrivance for deriving oxygen directly and partially from the atmosphere, as the water of the lake became impure. So important an advantage would be fostered, and, as the inland sea became smaller, or its population larger or fiercer, the fishes with a sufficiently developed air-breathing apparatus pa.s.sed to the land, where, as yet, they would find no serious enemy. The fact is beyond dispute; the theory of how it occurred is plausible enough; the consequences were momentous. Great changes were preparing on the land, and in a comparatively short time we shall find its new inhabitant subjected to a fierce test of circ.u.mstances that will carry it to an enormously higher level than life had yet reached.

I have said that the fact of this transition to the land is beyond dispute. The evidence is very varied, but need not all be enlarged upon here. The widespread Dipneust fishes of the Devonian rocks bear strong witness to it, and the appearance of the Amphibian immediately afterwards makes it certain. The development of the frog is a reminiscence of it, on the lines of the embryonic law which we saw earlier. An animal, in its individual development, more or less reproduces the past phases of its ancestry. So the free-swimming jelly-fish begins life as a fixed polyp; a kind of star-fish (Comatula) opens its career as a stalked sea-lily; the gorgeous dragon-fly is at first an uncouth aquatic animal, and the ethereal b.u.t.terfly a worm-like creature. But the most singular and instructive of all these embryonic reminiscences of the past is found in the fact that all the higher land-animals of to-day clearly reproduce a fish-stage in their embryonic development.

In the third and fourth weeks of development the human embryo shows four (closed) slits under the head, with corresponding arches. The bird, the dog, the horse--all the higher land animals, in a word, pa.s.s through the same phase. The suggestion has been made that these structures do not recall the gill-slits and gill-arches of the fish, but are folds due to the packing of the embryo in the womb. In point of fact, they appear just at the time when the human embryo is only a fifth of an inch long, and there is no such compression. But all doubt as to their interpretation is dispelled when we remove the skin and examine the heart and blood-vessels. The heart is up in the throat, as in the fish, and has only two chambers, as in the fish (not four, as in the bird and mammal); and the arteries rise in five pairs of arches over the swellings in the throat, as they do in the lower fish, but do not in the bird and mammal. The arrangement is purely temporary--lasting only a couple of weeks in the human embryo--and purposeless. Half these arteries will disappear again. They quite plainly exist to supply fine blood-vessels for breathing at the gill-clefts, and are never used, for the embryo does not breathe, except through the mother. They are a most instructive reminder of the Devonian fish which quitted its element and became the ancestor of all the birds and mammals of a later age.

Several other features of man's embryonic development--the budding of the hind limbs high up, instead of at the base of, the vertebral column, the development of the ears, the nose, the jaws, etc.--have the same lesson, but the one detailed ill.u.s.tration will suffice. The millions of years of stimulating change and struggle which we have summarised have resulted in the production of a fish which walks on four limbs (as the South American mud-fish does to-day), and breathes the atmosphere.

We have been quite unable to follow the vast changes which have meantime taken place in its organisation. The eyes, which were mere pits in the skin, lined with pigment cells, in the early worm, now have a crystalline lens to concentrate the light and define objects on the nerve. The ears, which were at first similar sensitive pits in the skin, on which lay a little stone whose movements gave the animal some sense of direction, are now closed vesicles in the skull, and begin to be sensitive to waves of sound. The nose, which was at first two blind, sensitive pits in the skin of the head, now consists of two nostrils opening into the mouth, with an olfactory nerve spreading richly over the pa.s.sages. The brain, which was a mere clump of nerve-cells connecting the rough sense-impressions, is now a large and intricate structure, and already exhibits a little of that important region (the cerebrum) in which the varied images of the outside world are combined.

The heart, which was formerly was a mere swelling of a part of one of the blood-vessels, now has two chambers.

We cannot pursue these detailed improvements of the mechanism, as we might, through the ascending types of animals. Enough if we see more or less clearly how the changes in the face of the earth and the rise of its successive dynasties of carnivores have stimulated living things to higher and higher levels in the primitive ocean. We pa.s.s to the clearer and far more important story of life on land, pursuing the fish through its continuous adaptations to new conditions until, throwing out side-branches as it progresses, it reaches the height of bird and mammal life.

CHAPTER VIII. THE COAL-FOREST

With the beginning of life on land we open a new and more important volume of the story of life, and we may take the opportunity to make clearer certain principles or processes of development which we may seem hitherto to have taken for granted. The evolutionary work is too often a mere superficial description of the strange and advancing cla.s.ses of plants and animals which cross the stage of geology. Why they change and advance is not explained. I have endeavoured to supply this explanation by putting the successive populations of the earth in their respective environments, and showing the continuous and stimulating effect on them of changes in those environments. We have thus learned to decipher some lines of the decalogue of living nature. "Thou shalt have a thick armour," "Thou shalt be speedy," "Thou shalt shelter from the more powerful," are some of the laws of primeval life. The appearance of each higher and more destructive type enforces them with more severity; and in their observance animals branch outward and upward into myriads of temporary or permanent forms.

But there is no consciousness of law and no idea of evading danger.

There is not even some mysterious instinct "telling" the animal, as it used to be said, to do certain things. It is, in fact, not strictly accurate to say that a certain change in the environment stimulates animals to advance. Generally speaking, it does not act on the advancing at all, but on the non-advancing, which it exterminates. The procedure is simple, tangible, and unconscious. Two invading arms of the sea meet and pour together their different waters and populations. The habits, the foods, and the enemies of many types of animals are changed; the less fit for the new environment die first, the more fit survive longest and breed most of the new generation. It is so with men when they migrate to a more exacting environment, whether a dangerous trade or a foreign clime. Again, take the case of the introduction of a giant Cephalopod or fish amongst a population of Molluscs and Crustacea. The toughest, the speediest, the most alert, the most retiring, or the least conspicuous, will be the most apt to survive and breed. In hundreds or thousands of generations there will be an enormous improvement in the armour, the speed, the sensitiveness, the hiding practices, and the protective colours, of the animals which are devoured. The "natural selection of the fittest" really means the "natural destruction of the less fit."

The only point a.s.sumed in this is that the young of an animal or plant tend to differ from each other and from their parents. Darwin was content to take this as a fact of common observation, as it obviously is, but later science has thrown some light on the causes of these variations. In the first place, the germs in the parent's body may themselves be subject to struggle and natural selection, and not share equally in the food-supply. Then, in the case of the higher animals (or the majority of animals), there is a clear source of variation in the fact that the mature germ is formed of certain elements from two different parents, four grandparents, and so on. In the case of the lower animals the germs and larvae float independently in the water, and are exposed to many influences. Modern embryologists have found, by experiment, that an alteration of the temperature or the chemical considerable effect on eggs and larvae. Some recent experiments have shown that such changes may even affect the eggs in the mother's ovary. These discoveries are very important and suggestive, because the geological changes which we are studying are especially apt to bring about changes of temperature and changes in the freshness or saltiness of water.

Evolution is, therefore, not a "mere description" of the procession of living things; it is to a great extent an explanation of the procession.

When, however, we come to apply these general principles to certain aspects of the advance in organisation we find fundamental differences of opinion among biologists, which must be noted. As Sir E. Ray Lankester recently said, it is not at all true that Darwinism is questioned in zoology to-day. It is true only that Darwin was not omniscient or infallible, and some of his opinions are disputed.

Let me introduce the subject with a particular instance of evolution, the flat-fish. This animal has been fitted to survive the terrible struggle in the seas by acquiring such a form that it can lie almost unseen upon the floor of the ocean. The eye on the under side of the body would thus be useless, but a glance at a sole or plaice in a fishmonger's shop will show that this eye has worked upward to the top of the head. Was the eye s.h.i.+fted by the effort and straining of the fish, inherited and increased slightly in each generation? Is the explanation rather that those fishes in each generation survived and bred which happened from birth to have a slight variation in that direction, though they did not inherit the effect of the parent's effort to strain the eye? Or ought we to regard this change of structure as brought about by a few abrupt and considerable variations on the part of the young? There you have the three great schools which divide modern evolutionists: Lamarckism, Weismannism, and Mendelism (or Mutationism).

All are Darwinians. No one doubts that the flat-fish was evolved from an ordinary fish--the flat-fish is an ordinary fish in its youth--or that natural selection (enemies) killed off the old and transitional types and overlooked (and so favoured) the new. It will be seen that the language used in this volume is not the particular language of any one of these schools. This is partly because I wish to leave seriously controverted questions open, and partly from a feeling of compromise, which I may explain. [*]

* Of recent years another compromise has been proposed between the Lamarckians and Weismannists. It would say that the efforts of the parent and their effect on the position of the eye--in our case--are not inherited, but might be of use in sheltering an embryonic variation in the direction of a displaced eye.

First, the plain issue between the Mendelians and the other two schools--whether the pa.s.sage from species to species is brought about by a series of small variations during a long period or by a few large variations (or "mutations") in a short period--is open to an obvious compromise. It is quite possible that both views are correct, in different cases, and quite impossible to find the proportion of each cla.s.s of cases. We shall see later that in certain instances where the conditions of preservation were good we can sometimes trace a perfectly gradual advance from species to species. Several sh.e.l.lfish have been traced in this way, and a sea-urchin in the chalk has been followed, quite gradually, from one end of a genus to the other. It is significant that the advance of research is multiplying these cases. There is no reason why we may not a.s.sume most of the changes of species we have yet seen to have occurred in this way. In fact, in some of the lower branches of the animal world (Radiolaria, Sponges, etc.) there is often no sharp division of species at all, but a gradual series of living varieties.

On the other hand we know many instances of very considerable sudden changes. The cases quoted by Mendelists generally belong to the plant world, but instances are not unknown in the animal world. A shrimp (Artemia) was made to undergo considerable modification, by altering the proportion of salt in the water in which it was kept. b.u.t.terflies have been made to produce young quite different from their normal young by subjecting them to abnormal temperature, electric currents, and so on; and, as I said, the most remarkable effects have been produced on eggs and embryos by altering the chemical and physical conditions. Rats--I was informed by the engineer in charge of the refrigerating room on an Australian liner--very quickly became adapted to the freezing temperature by developing long hair. All that we have seen of the past changes in the environment of animals makes it probable that these larger variations often occur. I would conclude, therefore, that evolution has proceeded continuously (though by no means universally) through the ages, but there were at times periods of more acute change with correspondingly larger changes in the animal and plant worlds.

In regard to the issue between the Lamarckians and Weismannists--whether changes acquired by the parent are inherited by the young--recent experiments again suggest something of a compromise. Weismann says that the body of the parent is but the case containing the germ-plasm, so that all modifications of the living parent body perish with it, and do not affect the germ, which builds the next generation. Certainly, when we reflect that the 70,000 ova in the human mother's ovary seem to have been all formed in the first year of her life, it is difficult to see how modifications of her muscles or nerves can affect them. Thus we cannot hope to learn anything, either way, by cutting off the tails of cows, and experiments of that kind. But it is acknowledged that certain diseases in the blood, which nourishes the germs, may affect them, and recent experimenters have found that they can reach and affect the germs in the body by other agencies, and so produce inherited modifications in the parent. [*] If this claim is sustained and enlarged, it may be concluded that the greater changes of environment which we find in the geological chronicle may have had a considerable influence of this kind.

* See a paper read by Professor Bourne to the Zoological Section of the British a.s.sociation, 1910. It must be understood that when I speak of Weismannism I do not refer to this whole theory of heredity, which, he acknowledges, has few supporters. The Lamarckian view is represented in Britain by Sir W. Turner and Professor Darwin. In other countries it has a larger proportion of distinguished supporters. On the whole subject see Professor J. A.

Thomson's "Heredity" (1909), Dewar and Finn's "Making of Species" (1909--a Mendelian work), and, for essays by the leaders of each school, "Darwinism and Modern Science"

(1909).

The general issue, however, must remain open. The Lamarckian and Weismannist theories are rival interpretations of past events, and we shall not find it necessary to press either. When the fish comes to live on land, for instance, it develops a bony limb out of its fin. The Lamarckian says that the throwing of the weight of the body on the main stem of the fin strengthens it, as practice strengthens the boxer's arm, and the effect is inherited and increased in each generation, until at last the useless paddle of the fin dies away and the main stem has become a stout, bony column. Weismann says that the individual modification, by use in walking, is not inherited, but those young are favoured which have at birth a variation in the strength of the stem of the fin. As each of these interpretations is, and must remain, purely theoretical, we will be content to tell the facts in such cases. But these brief remarks will enable the reader to understand in what precise sense the facts we record are open to controversy.

Let us return to the chronicle of the earth. We had reached the Devonian age, when large continents, with great inland seas, existed in North America, north-west Europe, and north Asia, probably connected by a continent across the North Atlantic and the Arctic region. South America and South Africa were emerging, and a continent was preparing to stretch from Brazil, through South Africa and the Antarctic, to Australia and India. The expanse of land was, with many oscillations, gaining on the water, and there was much emigration to it from the over-populated seas.

When the fish went on land in the Devonian, it must have found a diet (insects, etc.) there, and the insects must have been preceded by a plant population. We have first, therefore, to consider the evolution of the plant, and see how it increases in form and number until it covers the earth with the luxuriant forests of the Carboniferous period.

The plant world, we saw, starts, like the animal world, with a great kingdom of one-celled microscopic representatives, and the same principles of development, to a great extent, shape it into a large variety of forms. Armour-plating has a widespread influence among them.

The graceful Diatom is a morsel of plasm enclosed in a flinty box, often with a very pretty arrangement of the pores and markings. The Desmid has a coat of cellulose, and a less graceful coat of cellulose encloses the Peridinean. Many of these minute plants develop locomotion and a degree of sensitiveness (Diatoms, Peridinea, Euglena, etc.). Some (Bacteria) adopt animal diet, and rise in power of movement and sensitiveness until it is impossible to make any satisfactory distinction between them and animals. Then the social principle enters. First we have loose a.s.sociations of one-celled plants in a common bed, then closer cl.u.s.ters or many-celled bodies. In some cases (Volvox) the cl.u.s.ter, or the compound plant, is round and moves briskly in the water, closely resembling an animal. In most cases, the cells are connected in chains, and we begin to see the vague outline of the larger plant.

When we had reached this stage in the development of animal life, we found great difficulty in imagining how the chief lines of the higher Invertebrates took their rise from the Archaean chaos of early many-celled forms. We have an even greater difficulty here, as plant remains are not preserved at all until the Devonian period. We can only conclude, from the later facts, that these primitive many-celled plants branched out in several different directions. One section (at a quite unknown date) adopted an organic diet, and became the Fungi; and a later co-operation, or life-partners.h.i.+p, between a Fungus and a one-celled Alga led to the Lichens. Others remained at the Alga-level, and grew in great thickets along the sea bottoms, no doubt rivalling or surpa.s.sing the giant sea-weeds, sometimes 400 feet long, off the American coast to-day. Other lines which start from the level of the primitive many-celled Algae develop into the Mosses (Bryophyta), Ferns (Pteridophyta), Horsetails (Equisetalia), and Club-mosses (Lycopodiales). The mosses, the lowest group, are not preserved in the rocks; from the other three cla.s.ses will come the great forests of the Carboniferous period.

The early record of plant-life is so poor that it is useless to speculate when the plant first left the water. We have somewhat obscure and disputed traces of ferns in the Ordovician, and, as they and the Horsetails and Club-mosses are well developed in the Devonian, we may a.s.sume that some of the sea-weeds had become adapted to life on land, and evolved into the early forms of the ferns, at least in the Cambrian period. From that time they begin to weave a mantle of sombre green over the exposed land, and to play a most important part in the economy of nature.

We saw that at the beginning of the Devonian there was a considerable rise of the land both in America and Europe, but especially in Europe.