What has been the destiny of the protoplasm of the countless animals and plants which are found in geologic strata? What part have ancient microbes had in the formation and disruption of the successive layers of which this earth is formed? These are questions which force themselves upon the mind, but which I will not attempt to answer. This biological view of the cosmogony which subjects the world, equally with all that is upon it, to the laws of development, evolution, and decay, does not, I believe, present so many difficulties as might at first sight appear. _Omne vivum ex vivo_ is a law of Nature, and all organic bodies spring from organic antecedents. Organic matter is our capital in this world, and the more frequently we can turn it over, and the more quickly and efficiently we can make it circulate, the more frequent will be our dividends. If we burn organic matter we may get a good dividend of energy, but nothing further is to be expected. The construction of the furnace involves an outlay of capital, which steadily diminishes as the furnace wears out by frequent use. If we burn organic matter merely to be rid of it, we spend our money for the sole purpose of dissipating our capital. The function of fire is to destroy and sterilise. If we mix organic matter with large quantities of water, we have to encounter all the evils and annoyance of putrefaction, and if, when so mixed, we send it to the sea, we have no material gain of any kind. We spend our money for the purpose of dissipating our capital. We may place the water containing the organic matter upon the land, and in tropical countries this is done, with excellent effect, for the production of rice, a semi-aquatic plant, which, according to Professor Georgeson, Professor of Agriculture in the Imperial University of Tokio, is said to prefer its nitrogen in the form of ammonia. The same authority states that nitrification does not take place under water, and careful experiments carried out at Tokio show that sulphate of ammonia is a much better manure for irrigated rice than nitrate of soda. In our damp climate sewage farming has proved a dismal failure, and the difficulties seem to increase with the quantity of water which has to be dealt with. Excess of water drowns the humus, and nitrification cannot go on in a soil the pores of which are closed by excess of moisture. The living earth, teeming with aërobic microbes, must be allowed to breathe. It needs for this purpose a certain amount (about 30 per cent.) of moisture; but it stands drowning no better than a man does, and if it be drowned, agricultural failure is inevitable. If we carefully return to the upper layers of the humus, in which air and microbes exist in plenty, the residue of everything which we extract from it, we inevitably increase the thickness of the humus and its fertility. Our capital increases, and our dividends increase and recur with a frequency which depends upon the climate.