whether plant or
animal; 'Lingula', a kind of mollusc; 'Trilobites', a crustacean animal,
having the same essential plan of construction, though differing in
many details from a lobster or crab; and Hymenocaris, which is also a
crustacean. So that you have all the 'Fauna' reduced, at this period,
to four forms: one a kind of animal or plant that we know nothing about,
and three undoubted animals--two crustaceans and one mollusc.

I think, considering the organization of these mollusca and crustacea,
and looking at their very complex nature, that it does indeed require a
very strong imagination to conceive that these were the first created of
all living things. And you must take into consideration the fact that
we have not the slightest proof that these which we call the oldest beds
are really so: I repeat, we have not the slightest proof of it. When you
find in some places that in an enormous thickness of rocks there are but
very scanty traces of life, or absolutely none at all; and that in other
parts of the world rocks of the very same formation are crowded with the
records of living forms, I think it is impossible to place any reliance
on the supposition, or to feel oneself justified in supposing that these
are the forms in which life first commenced. I have not time here
to enter upon the technical grounds upon which I am led to this
conclusion,--that could hardly be done properly in half a dozen lectures
on that part alone;--I must content myself with saying that I do not at
all believe that these are the oldest forms of life.

I turn to the experimental side to see what evidence we have there.
To enable us to say that we know anything about the experimental
origination of organization and life, the investigator ought to be able
to take inorganic matters, such as carbonic acid, ammonia, water, and
salines, in any sort of inorganic combination, and be able to build them
up into Protein matter, and that that Protein matter ought to begin to
live in an organic form. That, nobody has done as yet, and I suspect it
will be a long while before anybody does do it. But the thing is by no
means so impossible as it looks; for the researches of modern chemistry
have shown us--I won't say the road towards it, but, if I may so say,
they have shown the finger-post pointing to the road that may lead to
it.

It is not many years ago--and you must recollect that Organic Chemistry
is a young science, not above a couple of generati