The day must have been when the first living being appeared for the first time on our planet. Was it plant or animal? or a generalised organism uniting in some mysterious way the properties and powers of two kingdoms of nature, now so distinct, and even contrary to each other in their manifestations? Did it appear suddenly, or was it slowly evolved from dead matter by some process in which the albuminous or protoplasmic matter, which we know forms the basal substance of living beings, was first produced and then endowed with life? Did the first living being appear in a mature state, or was it merely a germ from which the mature individual could be produced? These are questions which science in its present state has no means of answering. We do not know any process by which the ingredients of protoplasm can be combined so as to produce that substance without a previous living being. We do not know what molecular differences may exist between dead albumen and that which we see growing and moving and instinct with life; still less do we know how to set up or establish these differences. We do not know the precise nature or relation to other forces of the energy which actuates living organisms. In our experience the simplest creatures that have life spring from previous germs, themselves the products of previous generations of living beings. Thus we are in the presence of great mysteries which it might be impossible for us to solve, even if we were permitted to visit some new planet on which the dawn of life was breaking. Some things, however, we can infer as to the conditions of the introduction of life. First, there is every reason to believe that the earth we inhabit was once a glowing, incandescent mass, condensing from a vaporous condition, and quite unfit for the abode of living beings, and which, even if in some previous state its materials had constituted the mass of an inhabited world, must have lost every trace of any living germ in the fervent heat to which it had been subjected. There must, therefore, have been in some way an absolute creation or origination of life and organisation.