44 Sowing New Worlds 



fourteen years, and some more complex animals, such 

 as Crustaceans and Rotifers, can endure desiccation 

 for some years. In certain cases what survives is the 

 entire animal, in other cases a surviving cyst is 

 formed inside the dying body, and in a third set of 

 cases the eggs alone persist. The state of latent life 

 is very imperfectly understood ; there are no signs of 

 vitality, and yet death has not occurred. The flux 

 has ceased, but the molecules of the protoplasm have 

 not disintegrated. 



We may be allowed to recall Becquerel's interest- 

 ing suggestion that if the sun were extinguished and 

 all the gases of our atmosphere were to vanish, there 

 might still be a persistence of seeds and germs, eggs 

 and spores of organisms, lingering for a long time on 

 the surface of the "frozen, uninhabitable planet, 

 wandering in the darkness of cosmic space." It is 

 possible that under the influence of the radiations of 

 a new system the frozen streams of protoplasm might 

 thaw and flow again ; it is possible that a shattering of 

 the derelict by collision or explosion might sow new 

 worlds with the seeds of old life. (See Thomson, 

 Secrets of Animal Life, 1919, p. 182.) 



(4) The fourth answer is the evolutionist one, that 

 the living arose by synthesis from the not-living — 

 perhaps from some colloidal carbonaceous slime ac- 

 tivated by ferments. This answer is in line with evolu- 

 tionist thinking, and it finds some support in the 

 successes of the synthetic chemist, who builds up com- 

 pounds like grape-sugar, oxalic acid, indigo, and 

 caffeine. There is also suggestiveness in the way in 



