One great mathematician worked on the basis of the rate of the present cooling of the earth. Counting backward to the time when the earth's surface must have been hotter, according to La Place's idea, he decided that our globe has been cool enough for the existence of life upon it for a period of somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred million years. Those who try to study the rate at which mud is being deposited in our bays and at the mouth of our rivers, and who hence try to deduce how long it has taken to produce the thickness of all the stratified rock we know, arrive at a figure larger, rather than smaller, than that mentioned above. The same is true of those who try to count the age of the earth by the rate at which the present rivers are carrying away their river basins, and hence who calculate how long it has taken the rivers of the globe to wash away all the rocks which it is quite clear have been carried out. Still others have attempted to solve the problem by seeing how much salt the rivers are carrying into the sea, and consequently how long it must have taken the sea to become as salt as it is. A very late attempt has been based on the alteration in the minerals that show radio-activity. Conservative estimates, based on all of these, would give us a figure on which we must not count with any exactness, but which will serve at least to mark the present trend of opinion. We may put this figure at one hundred millions of years.
The following [table] gives us the names of the periods into which the geologist has divided the past history of the earth. The first column gives a simple name, which, in each case, is a translation of the technical name the geologist gives to the era. This technical name is also given in parenthesis. The second column shows the number of years ago at which this period may be placed, while the third column gives a series of names most of which are in use in geology and which are intended to indicate the stage of advancement of the higher animals in that particular period. Some of these names are perhaps giving way to later terms, but all of them will be understood by any geologist. Most of them will serve to keep very clearly before the mind of the ungeological the period which he is studying. Like all such tables, this must be read from the bottom up. This arrangement is used because the oldest rocks in the series are naturally at the bottom and the newest rocks are on the top, though occasionally a region is sufficiently upset partly to reverse the order.
| ERAS | MILLIONS OF YEARS AGO (VERY UNCERTAIN) | STAGES OF ANIMAL DEVELOPMENT |
|---|---|---|
| Recent Life (Cenozoic) | 0 to 5 | Age of Man (Quaternary) Age of Mammals (Tertiary) |
| Middle Life (Mesozoic) | 5 to 10 | Age of Reptiles |
| Ancient Life (Palæozoic) | 10 to 25 | Age of Amphibians (Carboniferous) Age of Fishes (Devonian) Age of Invertebrates (Silurian and Cambrian) |
| Dawn Life (Eozoic) | 25 to 50 | Earliest Animals and Plants |
Having seen what the scientist supposes to be the method of formation of the earth itself, it will be interesting next to consider what the biologist surmises as to the origin of the life upon the earth. Here again two explanations hold. The one, and distinctly the older of the two, says that at some time in the far distant past, under conditions which are rarely if ever duplicated, out of the lifeless material of the globe were produced simple and low forms of life. These could not properly be called either animal or plant, but partook somewhat of the nature of both. Of this there is at present no evidence whatever. The only reason we have for suggesting it is that, if we understand the past conditions on the earth, there was a time when life was impossible. Now we find life. Hence it must have arisen. This of itself, of course, furnishes no proof, but leads us to try to imagine how the transition might have come about. Every scientist who believes in this form of origin holds that if the exact conditions are repeated the result will occur once more. He may believe that no such repetition is possible, but he is confident that, if it could be, life would arise again from lifeless matter.
This process of life arising from matter that is not alive is known as Spontaneous Generation. Two hundred years ago it was supposed to occur frequently. It was common belief that the beautiful pickerel weed which borders our Northern lakes, after freezing, went into a sort of protoplasmic slime out of which pickerel were produced. The eelgrass of the river was supposed to yield eels in a similar fashion. The dead bodies of animals were supposed to turn into maggots. Such crude ideas of spontaneous generation are no longer possible. The whole science of bacteriology absolutely presupposes the impossibility of spontaneous generation in the flasks and test tubes of the laboratory. One or two men of otherwise good standing in science still maintain that they are getting new life in their own test tubes, but they fail utterly to persuade the scientific world. I think it is a fair statement of the position of science to-day to say that there is no evidence whatever of spontaneous generation, excepting the presence of life upon the globe.
Not all has been said, however, on this question. The chemist is learning in the laboratory to produce many substances which, until very recent times, were produced only in the bodies of animals or plants. Dye-stuffs were originally gotten almost entirely from animal or plant material. At present the great majority of them are made in the laboratory, and in not a few cases they not only imitate the color of the older material, but actually have identically the same composition and constitution. The laboratory-made material is exactly like that made by the animals or the plants.
The same is true with regard to a large number of the fruit flavors. These are due to the presence of ethereal oils in the plant, and their exact counterparts can now be produced in the laboratory, and can serve every purpose of the fruit flavor itself. Alcohol has been produced artificially, and alcohols, which nature never dreamed of making, so far as we can tell, but which are made on her plan, are manufactured by the chemist. Last of all, sugar has recently been built up by the chemist, though the method at present is so expensive that it cannot possibly compete with the production of the commodity from the cane and the beet. As in the case of alcohol, all the sugars that nature makes can now be made artificially, and others of the same general plan which she seems not to have as yet devised can be produced within the laboratory.
Attempts have been made to manufacture proteids, but these have as yet eluded the efforts of the chemist. He is beginning, however, to come nearer understanding their composition, and when he once clearly comprehends that he may be able to reproduce them.
One of the German chemists is convinced that the nuclein in the nucleus of the cell is not a very complicated compound. Under such conditions it is not a matter of surprise that the physiological chemist should be constantly dreaming that he may at some time produce living matter in the laboratory. To the ordinary mind it scarcely seems possible. We are so entirely sure that life is not amenable to physics or chemistry that we can hardly conceive of the possibility of its originating out of matter in the test tube. If it does so come, and when it does so come, this will not prove that life is a less noble and less wonderful thing than we thought. It will only prove that chemistry and physics are more noble and more wonderful than we dreamed.