The Earth Buries Older Forms with More Beautiful Ones

As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications.

 The Boundary of Life

The harder we look at the border between life and non-life, the more elusive does the distinction become. Life, the animate, was supposed to have some sort of vibrant, throbbing quality, some vital essence - made to sound yet more mysterious when dropped into French: elan vital. Life, it seemed, was made of a special living substance, a witch's brew called 'protoplasm'. Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger, a fictional character even more preposterous than Sherlock Holmes, discovered that the ...