320 ORGANISATION IN SPACE AND TIME 



polymers was far lower. Under experimental conditions it 

 takes place in solutions containing only a few parts per 

 million of these substances. 



The water of the seas and oceans as we know them now 

 only contains negligible traces of organic compounds, which 

 arise secondarily from the decay of dead organisms. In the 

 vast majority of cases these substances are quickly consumed 

 by the organisms of the plankton, for which they provide 

 nourishment. Sometimes, but comparatively seldom, they 

 may remain in the depths of the sea for a relatively long 

 time untouched by micro-organisms. Numerous studies of 

 the slimy bed of the ocean at great depths indicate that, 

 under these conditions, dissolved substances of high molecu- 

 lar weight do, in fact, form aggregates similar to coacervates. 

 While studying the waters of the seas and oceans at depths 

 of hundreds and thousands of metres, A. Kriss and his col- 

 leagues** found submicroscopic formations reminiscent of 

 coacervates which they were able to photograph with an 

 electron microscope. The nature of these formations is still 

 not clear but nevertheless Kriss's observations are of great 

 interest. 



Thus, all the evidence now available agrees in indicating 

 that the organic polymers which were originally formed, and 

 in particular the protein-like polypeptides of high molecular 

 weight, must, at some stage in the evolution of carbon com- 

 pounds, have separated out from a homogeneous solution 

 in the form of multimolecular aggregates similar to the drops 

 of coacervate which are obtained under laboratory conditions. 

 The formation of coacervates in the waters of the hydro- 

 sphere was a very important stage in the evolution of the 

 primary organic substances and in the process of development 

 of life. Until this occurred an organic substance -was inextric- 

 ably merged with its surrounding medium, uniformly dis- 

 tributed throughout the whole extent of the solvent. When 

 coacervates were formed, the molecules of organic polymers 

 became concentrated at particular points and separated from 

 the surrounding medium by a more or less sharp boundary. 

 Thus there were formed entire multimolecular systems, co- 

 acervate drops, each of which already had a certain individual- 

 ity in contrast to all the rest of the external world surrounding 



