PHYSICAL CONDITIONS AT BEGINNING OF LIFE 589 



animal life than other sea-waters at the same temperature, or if 

 it could be shown that waters in volcanic areas show a marked 

 increase in the quantity of animal life in the years following 

 a volcanic eruption, we should have here further collateral 

 evidence. 



Nearly conclusive evidence would be gained if, following 

 an eruption, these organic compounds were found in isolated 

 pools formed in the downpour following the eruption, and free 

 from any great quantity of the synthetic bacteria. But no such 

 observations are known to the writer. 



In general it may be remarked that the quantity of such 

 substances would probably be small, and they would be mixed 

 with other substances in a way that might readily mask their 

 presence. Moreover, it might be only under special conditions, 

 seldom realised, that they are precipitated into such isolated 

 pools, in sufficient concentration to display their characteristic 

 chemical reactions. 



If, however, we conceive, with Spencer, 1 that the organic 

 chemist in his syntheses is merely repeating, unconsciously, the 

 processes by which these same substances have been built up 

 in nature, and if, further, we are able to effect these syntheses 

 in the laboratory under conditions which closely reproduce 

 volcanic chemism, so far as our knowledge extends, we establish 

 at least a working probability that such was the origin of these 

 substances in nature. If now the present state of our geological 

 knowledge warrants us in the conclusion that these conditions 

 are impossible of realisation anywhere else, and that this was 

 true throughout all geological time, this hypothesis gains as 

 much strength as may be derived from the fact that any other 

 mode of beginnings is inconceivable. 



All geological evidence leads us to believe that volcanic 

 activity has been prevalent, back to the earliest times (Geikie). 

 We have evidence, moreover, that volcanic activity was at some 

 periods far more general and violent than at the present time, 

 as in the vast lava flows of the Snake River and the Columbia 

 in North America, and more notably still in the Deccan, in 

 India, where an area of over 200,000 sq. miles has been covered 

 to a thickness sometimes exceeding 6,000 ft. 



Although it is evident that these enormous masses were not 

 erupted at any one time, but over a long period, they could 



1 Prin. of Biol., 2nd ed. p. 700. 



