His views are thus exhibited by Sir David Brewster: "The electric spark, escaping from the wild elements around it, struck life into an elementary and reproductive germ, and sea-plants, the food of animals, first decked the rude pavement of the ocean.

The lichen and the moss reared their tiny fronds on the first rocks that emerged from the deep; land-plants, evolving the various forms of fruit and flower, next arose,--the Upas and the bread-fruit tree, the gnarled oak and the lofty cedar.

Animal life appeared when the granary of nature was ready with its supplies.

A globule, having a new globule forming within itself, which is the fundamental form of organic being, may be produced in albumen by electricity; and as such globules may be identical with living and reproductive cells, we have the earliest germ of organic life, the first cause of all the species of animated nature which people the earth, the ocean, and the air.

Born of electricity and albumen, the simple monad is the first living atom; the microscopic animalcules, the snail, the worm, the reptile, the fish, the bird, and the quadruped, all spring from its invisible loins.