In 1875 he endeavoured to sum up in a popular form what was then known, in a little volume named "The Dawn of Life," which has long been out of print; and in 1893 the matter was referred to in a chapter of his work "Salient Points in the Science of the Earth." In 1895 he was invited to present the subject to a large and intelligent audience in a course of lectures delivered in the Lowell Institute, Boston; and the success which attended these lectures has induced him to reproduce them in the present work, in the hope that inquiries into the Dawn of Life may prove as fascinating to general readers as to those who prosecute them as a matter of serious work, and that their presentation in this form may stimulate further research in a field which is destined in the coming years to add new and important domains to the knowledge of life in the early history of the earth.

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