h we call protoplasm,
pro-to-plas-m. The word means 'first growth', for it was the first
thing that ever appeared that was capable of growing. We also call it
a cell. Now there was only one cell in the world. It had no
companions. And what do you suppose happened?"

"It must have been very lonesome," suggested Elsie, sympathetically.

"Yes, it must have been--certainly it must if it could feel or think.
But, at all events, whether or not it did feel lonely, it began right
away to make companions. Of course you can't think how it did that,
can you, dear?"

"I--I am afraid not," Elsie hesitated.

"Yet it was the very simplest way imaginable. It merely divided itself
into two parts, each of which was just like the other."

"Oh!" exclaimed Elsie. "But, then, mamma, who could tell which was the
father or mother, and which was the child? Or were they just brother
and sister, or two brothers?"

"There was not then what we now call 'sex', for that was only the
beginning of families, so to say, and it was very crude, as all things
are when they are first started. But perhaps we might call one cell
the mother of the other, since it is always the female, and not the
male, that brings forth children, though nobody could tell which was
the mother and which was the child."

"Well," said Elsie, "_that_ is the strangest thing yet!"

"It seems so to us, because it is so different from our way of
reproducing, but it was the natural way, and the same process is going
on to this day. Even little girls are born in a manner which, though
it appears very different, is the same in principle, as we shall
see."

"But, mamma, I thought that all living beings were obliged to have a
stamen or an ovary!"

"So they are obliged, dear! This cell grew until it was too large and
heavy to be supported by its structure, or lack of structure, and then
it fell apart. Force, or growth, was the stamen here, and the cell
itself was the ovary."

"Oh, then force or growth was the first stamen, mamma?"

"No, darling, it was not, unless we should call growth the stamen of
today--which we might do, in a way. But the first stamen was, in form,
a ray of the sun, and the first ovary was the earth, soil. For don't
you recall that this cell, which was the first life-form, was produced
by the sun shining on the earth or sea?"

Elsie pondered on this a moment. Then her face brightened.

"Oh, now I see!" she exclaimed. "And what a beautiful set of changes,