then life begins very early, about 4 A.M., with the rise of the first simple, single-celled organisms, but then advances no further for the next sixteen hours. 那么，生命起始很早，出现第一批最简单的单细胞生物大约是在上午4点钟，但在此后的l6个小时里没有取得多大进展。

　　Not until almost 8:30 in the evening, with the day five-sixths over, has Earth anything to show the universe but a restless skin of microbes. 直到晚上差不多8点30分，这一天已经过去六分之五的时候，地球才向宇宙拿出点成绩，但也不过是一层静不下来的微生物。

　　Then, finally, the first sea plants appear, 然后，终于出现了第一批海生植物。

　　followed twenty minutes later by the first jellyfish and the enigmatic Ediacaran fauna first seen by Reginald Sprigg in Australia. 20分钟以后，又出现了第一批水母以及雷金纳德·斯普里格最先在澳大利亚看到的那个神秘的埃迪亚卡拉动物群。

　　At 9:04 P.M. trilobites swim onto the scene, followed more or less immediately by the shapely creatures of the Burgess Shale. 晚上9点4分，三叶虫登场了，几乎紧接着出场的是布尔吉斯页岩那些形状美观的动物。

　　Just before 10 P.M. plants begin to pop up on the land. 快到10点钟的时候，植物开始出现在大地上。

　　Soon after, with less than two hours left in the day, the first land creatures follow. 过不多久，在这一天还剩下不足两个小时的时候，第一批陆生动物接着出现了。

　　Thanks to ten minutes or so of balmy weather, 由于10分钟左右的好天气，

　　by 10:24 the Earth is covered in the great carboniferous forests whose residues give us all our coal, and the first winged insects are evident. 到了10点24分，地球上已经覆盖着石炭纪的大森林，它们的残留物变成了我们的煤。第一批有翼的昆虫亮了相。

　　Dinosaurs plod onto the scene just before 11 P.M. and hold sway for about three-quarters of an hour. 晚上11点刚过，恐龙迈着缓慢的脚步登上了舞台，支配世界达三刻钟左右。

　　At twenty-one minutes to midnight they vanish and the age of mammals begins. 午夜前20分钟，它们消失了，哺乳动物的时代开始了。

　　Humans emerge one minute and seventeen seconds before midnight. 人类在午夜前1分l7秒出现。

　　The whole of our recorded history, on this scale, would be no more than a few seconds, a single human lifetime barely an instant. 按照这个比例，我们全部有记录的历史不过几秒钟长，一个人的一生仅仅是刹那工夫。