no SCIENCE PROGRESS 



extensive land flora there must come a great bacterial population, 

 both to form and to prepare the soil. This is evident from what 

 happened after the Krakatoa explosion in 1884. 1 So far then as 

 life on land is concerned, an extremely primitive microscopic 

 life is apparently antecedent to all other forms. 



The same is true of the sea. In recent work, A. Putter 2 has 

 endeavoured to show that the floral and primitively synthetic 

 organisms of the sea are quite inadequate to support the as- 

 tounding abundance of life which, little by llittle, we are coming 

 to learn exists there — a volume so great that compared with it 

 the total amount of land and aerial life is an almost negligible 

 quantity. Putter, therefore, endeavours to show that the sea is 

 a vast, though very weak, organic solution. His results have 

 not been confirmed and have even been directly called in ques- 

 tion, 3 though on the face of the evidence some such conception 

 as his seems to be necessary to many. 4 But whether or no the 

 destructive metabolism of the sea be less complete than that on 

 the land, it is still obvious that a vast floral life, directly utilising 

 solar energy, is a condition of a development of oceanic animal 

 life such as we know exists; such a flora is found in the Plankton. 

 It is evident that the algae, the desmids and their like must have 

 preceded, in point of time, the more elaborate animal types. 

 Side by side with these is to be found in sea water the same 

 teeming bacterial life as in the soil; moreover, for the most 

 part, marine bacteria are of the same types and varieties as soil 

 bacteria. 5 



It is amid these prototypes of life, both in the sea 6 and in 

 the soil, that the anaerobic bacteria are found. Like all bacteria 

 and the most primitive types in general, they are neither plant 

 nor animal in any clear sense of the word. Some, like the plants, 

 derive their nutrition directly from inorganic materials ; others 

 live on the dead organic substance of plants and animals ; whilst 

 others are able to exist only as parasites inhabiting the tissues 

 or cavities of living organisms. Finally, some live now in the 

 one way, now in the other. They contain no chlorophyll ; they 



1 Treub, cited from Euler, I.e. p. 140. 



2 " Die Ernahrung der Wassertiere," Zeit.f. allg. Physiol. Bd. vii. Heft 2 and 



3) l 907- 



3 Cf. Lesser, I.e. ; M. Henze, Pflueger's Arch. 478, 123, 1908. 



4 Cf. Johnstone, Life in the Sea, p. 221 ff. (London, 1908). 



5 Johnstone, I.e. 253 ff. 



6 Keutner, Wissctisch. Meeresunters. Kiel. Com. Bd. viii. 1905. 



