these first beginnings until today, with one year. Since we are unlikely yet to have discovered the oldest fossils of all, we can reckon that life started well before 3000 million years ago and as a rough guide, it will serve to let one day represent ten million years. On such a calendar, the Gunflint fossils of algae-like organisms, which seemed so extremely ancient when they were first discovered, are seen to be quite latecomers in the history of life, not appearing until the second week of August. In the Grand Canyon, the oldest worm trails were burrowed through the mud in the second week of November and the first fish appeared in the limestone seas a week later. The little lizard will have scuttled across the beach during the middle of December and man did not appear until the evening of 31 December. But we must return to January. The bacteria fed initially on the various carbon compounds that had taken so many millions of years to accumulate in the primordial seas. But as they flourished, so this food must have become scarcer.