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Kelly Lagor “It is often said that all conditions for the first production of a living organism are now present, which could have ever been present. But if (& oh what a big if) we could conceive in some warm little pond with all sorts of ammonia & phosphoric salts—light, heat, electricity, etc. present, that a protein compound was chemically formed, ready to undergo still more complex changes, at the present day [would] be instantly devoured, or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed.” -From Charles Darwin’s 1871 letter to Joseph Lee Hooker Scanlon