flaming through space, a vast, expanded mass of almost impalpable gases, heated far beyond the point which would dissipate any known substance. By looking out upon the giant planets of Jupiter and Saturn, the scientist is led to believe that they are now undergoing a process through which the Earth has passed, and in which the Moon has long preceded even the Earth. As the Earth, then of enormous comparative size, cooled off, the outer gases became thicker and heavier, at last so far condensing as to form water, of course marvelously reducing the size of the world. Upon the advent of water, with the lighter gases called air above it, the Earth may be said to have had a crust, and the sediment from this mass of water began to settle on the bottom, in mud and slime. It would take time, but then there was a great plenty of that, and there was a perfectly-enormous mass of water to magnify the deposit. Ere long, the surging fires of the inner Earth would sway outward at some spot, altering the shape of the crust, and baking the mud into a very hard rock called, say, quartz. With this rapid cooling, shrinking, and process of deposit, the volume of water rapidly became smaller, and af sudden volcanic action might have elevated the bottom of the sea out of the water, where the process of deposit would cease, and this elevation, never afterward having sunken again, would leave to the eyes of Man a specimen which, if he were permitted to find it by digging down at other places, would require an excavation twenty-five miles deep. This kind of stone, then, having passed through fires which would have annihilated any organic form, much more the material of which worms and jellies are composed, could contain the remains of nothing which then lived in the waters. An animal without bones, dying and sinking into the muddy bed of that ocean, would have been baked entirely too well done. Therefore, it is probable that all the early layers of mud, through the repeated action of inner fires, have undergone complete changes, finally settling into the crystalline rocks of the geologic times which are without any traces of animals or life in them. Upon these rocks, after they had been raised and lowered by the turmoil. of interior fires, the water again began its deposits of mud,

and into this mud fell many animals, always showing the same characteristic, namely, the absence of a back-bone. Geologists believe they have traced the different layers of rock as they have thus formed upon the crust of the Earth, being subjected to a lesser degree of heat at each fiery throe of the imprisoned fires, and thus forming a softer rock as the upper and more. recent layers are reached. These theorists put the first layer of the series down about 130,000 feet. That is, if one layer had been favorably situated to receive every other layer of rock upon top of it, it would be that far down in the bowels of the Earth. They then go at work calculating on the comparative length of time which would be required for the settling of mud enough make to all the crystals, granites, limestones, and chalks that have impressions of bones or shells in them.

Let us see how deposits are made now-a-days: The mouths of great rivers furnish the most favorable opportunities for observation, and it is found that, at the points where the Mississippi enters the Gulf of Mexico, enough mud is deposited every year to make a layer of 600 feet in 100,000 years. This is mud, and not solid quartz. Again, at the bottom of a great sea the process in these times would be much slower, although there is little possibility of judging rationally as to how much the rate of deposit would have been increased by the enormous volume of water. Haeckel places the time required for the formation of the rocks holding Mollusks alone, those holding skulless, tube-hearted Fishes and Mollusks, and those holding round-mouthed Fishes, together with the two previously-mentioned classes, at 53 per cent. of the whole age of the crust of the Earth. If we say a million years for all above the rocks without fossils, then it took 530,000 years to come up 70,000 feet of quartz, granite, and sandstone. The next 42,000 feet, which he divides into the limestone and millstone rocks, in which Enameled Fishes and Mud-fishes are found, he defines as the first period. The next is the coal period, in which Frogs and Newts are discovered. In the strata of coal are found the evidences of the existence and decay of many gigantic forests, one above another, and all turned to coal, but still retaining their shape at the time they were transformed.

Above the coal is the period of limestones and marls, containing the first Reptiles. These three periods, then (holding the fossils of all forms in the first 70,000 feet, and adding a low form of Fishes, then Frogs and Newts, and then low forms of Reptiles), would require 320,000 of the million years to accumulate. In the next 15,000 feet, requiring 110,000 years for formation, are found rocks and chalk containing a vast number of forms of life-Sea-dragons, Lizards, billed animals like the Duck-bill, Crocodiles, Tortoises, flying Reptiles and Dragons, billed Reptiles and Birds, and pouched animals. All these, together with all found below not already extinct at that time, are held in the rocks of the first 5,000 feet of this 15,000. No new fossil is found in the upper 10,000 feet. The upper 3,000 feet of this group of formations is mostly chalk. We have now arrived within 3,000 feet of the surface. Here we find the remains of all Snakes and Mammals, and only in the top layer of scarcely 500 feet are found the evidences of the former existence of Man. Of course, it can be seen that the lapse of but one million years is utterly insignificant in allowing time for the formation of all this rock, and this number of years has been used only to give the relative ages of the layers, according to some geologists.

From this examination of fossils, in rocks the ages of which are confidently asserted, we have the following series of guesses, still keeping our million of years as a sort of measure: First of all animals lived those without backbones. After 175,000 years there had grown up such differences as constituted a pulpy sort of fish with a simple crooked-handled gourd inside of him for vital organs and bowels. At the end of another 175,000 years these skulless Fishes had developed other variations, such as round-mouthed Fishes, still without gills, and upon these forms of life 175,000 years were heaped, completing the First Age of 70,000 feet of rock. During the next 110,000 years the Enameled Fishes and Mud-fishes had grown out of their round-mouthed ancestors, and during the formation of the coal layers, or 105,000 years more, when the water covered only part of the Earth at a time, Frogs and Newts grew out of the Mud-fishes. At the end of the last

105,000 years completing the Second Age (a grand deposit of 42,000 feet of rock), many Reptiles had grown out of the Fishes and Frogs. During the next 110,000 years life varied rapidly. The Mud-fish turned out a Sea-dragon. The offspring of some of the Reptiles changed into Lizards; some offspring of Frogs into the Duck-bill; some offspring of the Lizards into Crocodiles, others into Tortoises, and still others into flying Reptiles and Dragons. From some of the offspring of flying Reptiles came the billed Reptiles, and from some of the offspring of the billed and flying Reptiles came the Birds. From the offspring of the Duck-bill came the pouched Mammals like the Kangaroo. The jaw-bone of a Kangaroo is the only remain of any Mammal which has ever been found in the rocks of the " Reptilian Age," and the Evolutionists account for this upon the theory that the body of the Kangaroo, the oldest large Mammal, might have fallen into a river and been swept into the sea. There, the jaw-bone would be the one most easily detached from the decaying body, and would thus fall to the bottom alone, to be covered with sediment, baked by the spasms of the inward fires, and afterward discovered by Man in the rock of some mountain far from the sea, which had been heaved "to stay" when it was last lifted on high. This 110,000 years, the Third Age, accumulated 15,000 feet of these Reptile-bearing rocks. There is no need of tracing Haeckel's order of Evolution up the remaining 3,000 feet, for the rest of the way is after the Kangaroo-Lemur, Monkey, Man.

Darwin, therefore, believes Man came gradually from a lower form. The principal cause has been the law of Change, the next the law of Natural Selection, and the next the law of Sexual Selection. The principal evidences betraying Man's lowly origin are the point in his ear, the rudiments he possesses (the most important of which are a sort of slit in the neck of embryo Man at the twenty-fifth day, having the appearance of unformed gills, the covering of the child at three months before birth with a complete temporary coating of heavy white down, and the twitching muscles of the skin), together with the facts that he occasionally displays bodily

eccentricities which, if inherited, must have been dormant in his ancestors for thousands of years backward, and that he bears many striking likenesses to the animals lower in the scale of life. The principal evidence which the rocks bear is that Mollusks are the furthest down in the rocks and Man the highest up. Finally, the principal channel through which he expects his opinions to reach the earnest attention of the thinker is in his elaboration of the workings of Sexual Selection, the further perfection of which scheme is to eventually make the answer to the problem of highly-developed life so plain that he who runs may read.

As a recreative example of the constant workings of the law of Variation, and one where guess-work and patch-work are completely eliminated, it may be interesting to follow down a certain name which Jewish parents applied to their male offspring when they desired to express the idea of "the grace of Jehovah" in giving to them a son. They then called him Fehochanan, which they afterwards shortened into Jehohanan, and still later into Johanan. When Christ lived, all the people and Himself spoke Greek, and tried to get the sound by saying Foanan. It was far easier to a Greek, however, to say Ioannes, and that is what he probably used. The Romant called the Jew or Greek who bore the name, Johannes. From the Latin there branched out three languages. The Italian altered Johannes materially, but necessarily, into Giovanni (pronounced Zho-von-nee), the Spaniard called it Juan (pronounced Wahn, giving the a the sound of o in "nabob"), and the French shortened it nearly as much by saying Jean (Zhon). The German did not like the name very well, and so simply wrote it as he found it in the Latin, without using it much, and left it at Johann. Finally, however, dropping off the Yo at the start, for that is the way he pronounced the first syllable, the name Hans, showing the Latin s at the end, came into high favor. The English thought the French Jean and Jeanne were good short names for son and daughter, and accordingly imitated them, and said John and Joan. In the meantime the Greeks had varied into the Russian Ivan, and there being some subtle law of pronunciation, the far-away Welsh also