THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 157 



such an amount of community in nature between 

 Amoebse, Monads, and the matter of a Fungus, as to 

 make it much easier for us to believe what the experi- 

 ments indicate, viz. that Torula corpuscles, the simplest 

 Amoeh^j and tailed Monads.^ may all originate by a pro- 

 cess of Archebiosis, and that a certain interchange- 

 ability exists between them— so that a corpuscle of a 

 certain size may slowly expand into one or other of 

 these organic forms, according as its internal mole- 

 cular movements gradually assume different modes of 

 action. 



But we still have to allude to other primordial forms 

 which have been met with in our experimental flasks, — 

 I allude to the green-coloured Pediastreae, and bodies 

 resembling the simplest Desmids, which have been 

 found in the solutions containing iron and ammonic 

 citrate. In many respects their presence is a matter 

 of the highest interest. In about 200 experiments 

 with heated fluids in closed vessels, I have never 

 found even a fragment of green protoplasm except 

 on five occasions. Each time actual organisms were 

 found more or less similar to one another, and in each 

 case a salt of iron existed as one of the constituents of 

 the solution 1. As iron is one of the constituents of 

 chlorophyll, this correspondence is as much in accord- 

 ance with the de novo origin of such organisms, as it is 



^ See vol. i. pp. 364, 365, and pp. 448-454. 



