To make the point quite clear, I must say a word about the evolution of the earth in general, and point out briefly the chief features of the story. In the first place, we encounter the principle that on our planet organic life began to exist at a definite period. That statement is no longer disputed by any competent geologist or biologist. The organic history of the earth could not commence until it was possible for water to settle on our planet in fluid condition. Every organism, without exception, needs fluid water as a condition of existence, and contains a considerable quantity of it. Our own body, when fully formed, contains sixty to seventy per cent of water in its tissues, and only thirty to forty per cent of solid matter. There is even more water in the body of the child, and still more in the embryo. In the earlier stages of development the human fœtus contains more than ninety per cent of water, and not ten per cent of solids. In the lower marine animals, especially certain medusæ, the body consists to the extent of more than ninety-nine per cent of sea-water, and has not one per cent of solid matter. No organism can exist or discharge its functions without water. No water, no life! But fluid water, on which the existence of life primarily depends, could not exist on our planet until the temperature of the surface of the incandescent sphere had sunk to a certain point. Up to that time it remained in the form of steam. But as soon as the first fluid water could be condensed from the envelope of steam, it began its geological action, and has continued down to the present day to modify the solid crust of the earth. The final outcome of this incessant action of the water—wearing down and dissolving the rocks in the form of rain, hail, snow, and ice, as running stream or boiling surge—is the formation of mud. As Huxley says in his admirable _Lectures on the Causes of Phenomena in Organic Nature,_ the chief document as to the past history of our earth is mud; the question of the history of past ages resolves itself into a question about the formation of mud.