The quaint suggestion thus advanced by Lord Kelvin regarding the possibility of the first germs of life reaching our planet in the form of “a fragment of an exploded world,” was taken seriously at the time by some, but was undoubtedly merely a jest on the part of the able speaker. As my father remarked in the book from which the above quotation is made (_The Orbs Around Us_): “I can scarcely bring myself to believe that the eminent professor was serious in urging his hypothesis of seed-bearing meteors. Englishmen speak sometimes of the slowness with which a Scotsman apprehends a jest; but the Scotsman may return the compliment, so far, at least, as the southern estimate of Scottish humor is concerned. For a true Scot makes his jest with a gravity and _aplomb_ unequaled among Sassenach humorists. It is far from improbable that the seriousness with which the seed-bearing meteorites have been discussed proved infinitely amusing to the gathering of the clans in Edinburgh.” Nevertheless, that there were some believers who were convinced that Lord Kelvin would not have advanced such a theory without some solid basis for its foundation, was shown by the fact that the great Swedish scientist, Svante Arrhenius, considered it worth while, in his book entitled _The Life of the Universe_, to refer to the various difficulties which have made it next to impossible to establish the theory, which he compares (from the standpoint of arousing popular interest) with the problem of perpetual motion. He concluded his remarks on the subject by the statement (which has already been confirmed) that the problem of spontaneous generation in the actual form of a meteor will, “it is to be expected, be eliminated from the scientific program, just as the problem of perpetual motion has been discarded.” Nevertheless, there is something fascinating about this myth which appealed strongly, at the time it was advanced, to the imagination, though it led to queries which when answered led nowhere. If the worlds by bursting supplied space with seed-bearing meteors, how were they themselves peopled with living beings? “This circumstance of itself throws an air of doubt over the new hypothesis,” according to my father’s views on the subject, “as a seriously intended account of the origin of life on our earth.” It recalls the cumbersome way in which the Hindu accounted for the support of our planet in space, supposing it rested upon the back of a tortoise, but the Hindu student of science might well ask how is the tortoise itself supported? Or again, supposing life-bearing meteorites reached our planet from exploded worlds, what would be their condition by the time they were deposited on a soil favorable for their development?