IONIZATION 53 



animals the blue rays are more effective than the red.' Spores 

 given off as ciliated cells from the algae seek first the blue rays. 

 Since the food supply of animals is primarily derived from 

 chlorophyll-bearing plants, animals are less directly dependent 

 on the solar light and solar heat, while the chemical life of 

 plants fluctuates throughout the day with the variations of 

 light and temperature. Thus Richards- finds in the cacti that 

 the breaking down of the acids through the splitting of the 

 acid compounds is a respiratory process caused by the alternate 

 oxidation and deoxidation of the tissues through the action of 

 the sun. 



The solar energy transformed into the chemical potential 

 energy of the compounds of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen in 

 the plants is transmuted by the animal into motion and heat 

 and then dissipated. Thus in the life cycle we observe both 

 the conservation and the degradation of energy, corresponding 

 with the first and second laws of thermodynamics developed 

 in physics by the researches of Newton, Helmholtz, Phillips, 

 Kelvin, and others.^ The remaining life processes correspond 

 in many ways to Newton's third law of motion. 



Action and Reaction as Adaptive Properties of the Life 



Elements 



The adaptation of the chemical elements to life processes 

 is due to their incessant action and reaction, each element 

 having its peculiar and distinctive forms of action and reaction, 

 which in the organism are transmuted into functions. Such 

 activity of the life elements is largely connected with forms 

 of electric energy which the physicists call ionization, while 

 the correlated or coordinated interaction of various groups 



^Op. cit., p. 127. - Richards, Herbert M., 1915, pp. 34, 73-75. 



'Henderson, Lawrence J., 1913, pp. 15-1S. 



