PHYSICAL CONDITIONS AT BEGINNING OF LIFE 591 



We may readily conceive the formation of pools or even 

 large lakes by such an upheaval. The temperature of these 

 pools and lakes, in contact with the hot volcanic masses which 

 formed them, might be high (cf. Observations made by revenue 

 cutter McCulloch, 1907-8), so that by rapid evaporation the 

 saline concentration might be raised far above that of the 

 surrounding waters. Through the action of superheated steam 

 on the rocks, this concentration, especially in metallic salts 

 like those of magnesium, iron, etc., might be still further 

 increased, and especially might we suppose, under action of 

 carbon dioxide on phosphatic rocks like apatite, a considerable 

 concentration of phosphoric acid. 



Conceive now that these lakes or pools lay in the vicinity 

 of volcanoes in prolonged activity, such as, for example, our 

 present-day Stromboli. Even were the formation of organic 

 substances and amino acids through the activity of the volcanoes 

 extremely slight, this might, through continuous precipitation 

 into these lakes, likewise acquire a considerable concentration, 

 even to the point of forming a coagulum. This would cool in 

 time, and might then, under ordinary atmospheric precipita- 

 tion, acquire any desired degree of dilution. It might readily 

 undergo a whole series of alternating coagulations and re- 

 solutions, so that it might repeat on a large scale very much 

 the same series of reactions as are employed at the present 

 time for the analysis and synthesis of these substances in 

 the laboratory. 



We should have thus, conceivably, a theatre offering almost 

 every imaginable variety of conditions for inaugurating the 

 initial stages of life. Precisely what these stages were we 

 may not say as yet, for our knowledge of the mode of con- 

 densation, polymerisation, and the union among themselves of 

 the amino acids, carbohydrates and hydrocarbons is still in 

 the beginning. We have not the slightest reason, however, to 

 believe that these processes are or were excessively complex, 

 for the ways of nature are simple. 1 



We have no reason to doubt that the processes were 

 essentially the same as those by which the plant, and still 

 lower organisms, build up organic substances from inorganic 

 materials. We have every reason for supposing that these 

 processes were in principle simply a reversal of those by 



1 Cf. Ciamician, I.e. p. 5, on simplicity of the plant's " laboratory." 



