Dinah, the only daughter, represents the "Virgin." We shall see later the connection between the Ram (the zodiacal sign Aries) and the Egyptian and Hebrew gods; and the evolution of the Mohammedan crescent from the horns of the Ram-the emblem placed on the heads of the Æloim or Ammonean gods, Moses, when he came down from Mount Sin-ai, appearing "horned" (rendered in the Bible as "his face shone "). The Egyptian Moses was represented being initiated into the Æloim, or Aleim, by having the emblem (the crescent) placed on his head.

II.

EVOLUTION OF LIFE-PROTOPLASM-Cell Life-VegETAL AND ANIMAL CELLS-SPERMS AND GERMS-EPIGENESIS -SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST EVOLUTION OF THE SPECIES DEVOLUTION - EVOLUTION OF MAN - HIS BIRTHPLACE AND DISPERSION-DEATH AND DISSOLU

TION.

LIFE is the animating principle which pervades certain matter, which principle consists in the continuous adjustment of internal to external relations. "All vital actions have for their final purpose the balancing of certain outer processes by certain inner processes." While this balancing or adjustment of relations is, in the lower kinds of life, direct and simple-as the plant in the presence of light, heat, water, and carbonic acid-it becomes in animals, and especially in the higher orders, extremely complex. For, the requirements for the growth and repair of plants are everywhere present, but the materials for the growth and repair of animals are of a special kind, which have not only to be sought for, but, when found, have to be reduced to a fit state for assimilation, which necessitates locomotion, the senses, and an elaborate digestive apparatus.

Though the whole earth, including every particle of matter that it is made up of, is in constant motion (described as of an oscillatory and vibratory character), this is not life. Life is matter possessing the power to initiate motion from within, thus differing from non-living matter, or material formations, in which motion must be initiated from without. In the latter the inherent force is present, but not the power to put it into motion.

It is probable that living matter, in the first instance, was evolved from non-living matter; but how we cannot tell. It was not until the earth had cooled down and contracted,

and the watery vapour surrounding it had condensed, that life upon it was rendered possible. This commenced with a minute atom of albuminoid matter called protoplasm, under water, acted upon by the sun's rays. Into this structureless matter energy was radiated from the sun, force being inherent in all matter. Protoplasm (without a nucleus) exhibits all the phenomena of life-moving, eating, and multiplying by fission or division. It is a substance consisting of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen, in a complex union, and nearly identical with albumen (which is seen in the white of egg). By the drying and hardening of the outer portion a cell wall was developed, and in the centre of the protoplasmic contents what appears to be a nucleus, and frequently nucleoli, were also developed, the latter of which are the supposed rudiments of the future female germ and the male sperm.

The cell is the structural unit of all organized bodies, constituting not only the basis of the ovum of plants and animals, but of the tissues themselves in their perfect state, which are mere multiples of such cell units variously modified.

The simple cell assumed two forms-the plant and the animal cell. The former contains a certain waxy substance called chlorophyll, the presence of which depends entirely upon the action of the sun; it forms the green colouring matter of plants, and has the power of breaking up the carbonic acid of the air and the water it obtains by its roots, taking up carbon from the former and hydrogen from the latter; thus forming hydrocarbons (starch, etc.), and setting free the oxygen of both into the air. The plant cell not only differs from the animal cell in containing chlorophyll, but an inner capsule is developed within the outer cellulose wall, which differs again in being non-nitrogenous, and developing a woody fibre called lignin, which renders the capsule tough, and by developing which it walled itself in, and condemned itself to a fixed, automatic life; thus becoming less accessible to external influences, less able to combine for the construction of nerve and muscle tissue, and less liable to evaporation than the animal cell. Animal cells do not always possess a cell wall, and they have the power of developing lime salts.

The cell of plant life is a higher form of life than the

lowest form of animal life. The plant cells increase and multiply by division and budding; but sexuality is manifest very low down in the scale, and germ and sperm cells are found, each of which separately is incapable of further development.

The plant cell, being immovable, obtains its nourishment from the mineral world, in the form of hydrogen and nitrogen, by throwing out tentacles into the ground, forming roots, and from the air in the form of carbon, by proliferation of its cells, which, budding one on the top of the other, enables it to reach the surface of the water. The simplest and earliest forms are the "cellular "-wholly composed of cells, as above, and the "vascular "-producing systems of vessels, woolly tissues, and leaves, by proliferating their cells in a horizontal layer. Cellular plants are of two kinds— those which contain chlorophyll (alga) and those which do not (fungi). The first live like plants, by absorbing and assimilating carbon, under the influence of sun-rays; the second live like animals, by using up or destroying the carbon compounds already stored up by green plants; among these some of the simplest and lowest are bacteria, which live in stagnant and putrid fluids, and in the bodies and blood of diseased animals. Those bacteria which cause infectious disease are called bacilli. The lichens are a mixed group, evolved from alga and fungi. Mosses and liverworts are an intermediate stage between cellular and vascular plants, have a rudimentary stem and commencement of vessels, and display an approach to flowers. vascular plants were evolved from the cellular plants, and are characterized by possessing special vessels for the conveyance of sap and organized material, and woody fibres. These formed two distinct groups-" flowerless " and "flowering"; the former consisting of ferns and horse-tails, at one time the leading vegetation of the world; but they have been lived down by the latter, the flowering plants, which again form two distinct groups—the "naked seeded" plants (cyads, pines, firs, cypresses, and yews) and the "fruitbearing" plants (herbs, plants, shrubs, bush, and tree).

The

The animal cell assumed a different form in its evolution, and, remaining free to wander, developed digestive organs to digest that which the plant manufactured, but which it was unable to manufacture itself. While the vegetal bodies

VEGETAL AND ANIMAL CELLS.

31

acquired the power of forming the visible out of the invisible, converted the lifeless into the living, the animal--unable to accomplish this-obtained from the former its supply of protoplasm and energy by feeding upon it, and for which supply it is entirely dependent upon vegetal life. The lowest form of animal cell life is the single nucleated cell of the protozoa (protos, one; zoon, animal) group-the amaba. This amaba is of astounding minuteness in size, doing everything appertaining to life-feeling, moving, feeding, and multiplying by division. The lowest member of the many-celled group (metazoa) is the morula," an aggregate of AMOEBA. many cells; and it is to the growth and meta

A

C

GASTRULA.

A, epiblast; B, hypoblast, lining central cavity or stomach; c, mouth.

morphosis of these aggregated cells that the organs and tissues of animal life owe their origin. The cells of the morula diverge from one another in such a manner as to give rise to a central space, around which they dispose themselves as a coat or envelope, and thus the morula becomes a vesicle filled with a fluid-the "planula." The wall of the planula is next pushed in on one side (invaginated), whereby it is converted into a doublewalled sac with an opening, which leads into the cavity lined by the inner wall. This cavity is the primitive alimentary cavity. The inner, or invaginated, layer is the hypoblast; the outer, the epiblast; and the embryo in this stage is termed a gastrula. In all the higher animals a layer of cells makes its appearance between the hypoblast and the epiblast, and is termed the mesoblast. In the further development, the epiblast becomes the ectoderm, or epidermic layer of the body (or skin); the hypoblast becomes the epithelium of the middle portion of the alimentary canal; and the mesoblast gives rise to all the other tissues except the central nervous system, which originates from an ingrowth of the epiblast. And so, from the infusorians, rhizopods, and gregarines (the simplest animals of the protozoa group) were evolved the sponges -the last removed from the gastrula-and the cœlenterata, consisting of stinging animals (zoophytes, jelly-fish, sea.