igS NATURAL SCIENCE. September, 1896. 



foundation of the life-process, protoplasm, belongs to the group of 

 albuminous carbon combinations, one sought to refer the phenomena 

 upon which life depend to the peculiar chemico-physical characters of 

 carbon. But this so-called carbon theory of Haeckel, like the attempts 

 of O. Biitschli and others, to imitate plasma-structure and plasma- 

 movements by artificial mixing,^ can as little replace our still 

 defective perception, as can living protoplasm follow from a mixture 

 of dead albuminous combinations. 



An explanation, to some extent satisfactory, of the phenomena that 

 take place at the first beginning of life, is nowadays the less likely to 

 be gained, as chemistry has not yet given us any definite insight into 

 the molecular structure of protoplasm, and as, moreover, from theo- 

 retical considerations, there comes the conviction that even the much- 

 quoted " simple protoplasmic mass " is really of very complicated 

 structure, and is not to be so glibly compared to an albumen-mixture. 



Moreover, the enthusiasm with which one thought he could recog- 

 nise in "bathybius " Oken's primary slime as an unindividualised 

 protoplasmic mass covering the bottom of all oceans, ^ has cooled 

 perceptibly. The supposed primary beings without a nucleus shrink 

 also away, since we possess means to prove the existence of the 

 nucleus even in cases where it remains undiscoverable by the primi- 

 tive research-technique of olden time, and the supposition of a " spon- 

 taneous cell development " in organic fluids has given way to the 

 sentence " omnis cellula e cellula." So as soon as it is proved that the 

 last of the monera possess a nucleus like all other cells, there will 

 yawn a much wider abyss between the most simple known forms of 

 life and the inorganic individual, the crystal. 



{To be continued.) 



^ O. Biitschli, " Untersuchungen uber mikroscopische Schaume und das Proto- 

 plasma," Leipzig, 1892, as also later papers by the same author in the Verhandlungen 

 des naturh.-medicinischen Vereins zu Heidelberg. 



^ The bathybius, as lately shown by Bessels, is probably nothing more than a 

 plasmodium-like organism, whose distribution is locally restricted. See " Bronn's 

 Classen und Ordnungen des Thierreichs, Protozoa." Newly revised by O. Biitschli. 

 Pp. 179-181. Leipzig and Heidelberg, 1880. 



