46 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



steady interchange of two constituents or groups of them took 

 place, one beneficial to the mass and absorbable by it, another 

 waste and disintegrating in action, and that was steadily re- 

 moved from it, then added proof would have been secured 

 of physico-chemical and biochemical continuity. The nearest 

 approach to such is the experimental result described by Leduc, 

 who says that calcium chloride growing in a solution of potas- 

 sium carbonate is transformed as follows into calcium carbonate, 

 CaCl2-l-K2C03 = CaC03+2KCl. Thus an osmotic growth can 

 make a choice between the substances offered to it, rejecting 

 the potassium of the nutrient liquid, and absorbing water and 

 the radical CO3, while at the same time it eliminates and ex- 

 cretes chlorine, which may be found in the nutrient liquid after 

 the reaction. So far as we are aware, the above is the nearest 

 proof that has even been suggested. Respiration, therefore, 

 is one of the partial barriers between inorganic and organic 

 bodies that has yet to be removed, or more perfectly explained, 

 in its true significance. 



The terms reproduction and multiplication have been used 

 in so wide and varied a sense for organisms that, for purposes 

 of comparison with the inorganic bodies, use of the term must 

 be restricted and its meaning defined. Since sexual differ- 

 entiation and reproduction are entirely absent, at least in the 

 simpler Acaryota, and since these are devoid of a nuclear 

 mechanism that is evidently a necessary constituent of sexual 

 reproduction, we do not take account of it at present. Of 

 asexual multiplication the varieties that we call division, bud- 

 ding, and endogenous formation may either or all have been 

 primitive, though the first has become the successfully sur- 

 viving type. But, from the inorganic side, the changes that 

 may occur in Traube's cells are most instructive. That experi- 

 menter showed that, if continued inhibition and swelling of a 

 walled-in colloid mass proceeded, a stage was reached where 

 rupture of the wall occurred, but new and minor masses resulted 

 therefrom, which started to grow and to absorb surrounding 

 materials. Leduc has added to and extended these results 

 (23: 124). 



