PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
I AM, on the whole, pleased with the reception of this little book by the literary world. It has received less adverse criticism than I anticipated. The serious side of the book, the underlying theory of the Cosmos, has, however, not generally been noticed. Although seemingly light and imaginative, this work is the result of many years' study of Nature's laws, and my meditations upon Creation have led me to a theory which I have only ventured to lay before the public in this popular and imaginative form.
This theory is that life is well-nigh universal, and that, as we see the elements (in the spectroscope) which are found upon the earth, prevailing in distant stars in divers combinations, so the forms of life which are found on earth, prevail in other worlds, but under various kinds of development. At present, man knows of two worlds of life—the Land and the Aquatic, to which we may add the worlds of past ages in Palaeontology. But, both on land and sea, we find the same general conception (so to speak) of flora and fauna. The sea has its plants (in the algae), its moluscs, its insects (in the Crustacea), its vertebrata (in the fishes and cetacea). So in past ages life, both by sea and land, seems to have been complete: plants, insects, vertebrate animals existing even in secondary formations.
