Energies of the Organic World 85 



becomes typical of, and is the fundamental combination for, 

 the varied rates of ether-particle vibration that together con- 

 stitute protoplasm throughout the entire organic realm. This 

 then, working in harmonic relation with the pigment chloro- 

 phyll, and the sunlight that the chlorophyll absorbs and trans- 

 forms into biotic energy, enables the chlorophyll to link up 

 carbon and hydration elements into sugar, and again by further 

 expenditures of intra-molecular biotic energy to change the 

 sugar into starch or into some still higher chemical substance, 

 that in turn is used as an energizing chemical food for the proto- 

 plasm by being successively linked up into amino-acids, peptides, 

 proteids, and finally protoplasm. 



As already stated then (p. 80) we consider that what might 

 be called accumulators or Leiden Jars of biotic energy are to 

 hand, and these of a very perfect kind. In dormant seeds that 

 retain \dtality for 10-50 years, in dormant bulbs that retain 

 it for 1-10 years, in dormant cycadeous trunks that retain it 

 for 12-24 months, as well as in many similar structures that 

 will occur to every one, stores of some perfect energy are bottled 

 up, and only very slowly expended. 



Similarly the prolonged periods of environal dessication and 

 dormancy undergone by various infusors, rotifers, tardigrades, 

 fishes hke Protopterus, and higher forms up to the hibernating 

 mammals indicate the existence of like reserves of biotic energy 

 amongst animals. 



Now there is absolutely no physical nor biological proof 

 that either electricity or chemical energy can be stored in 

 accumulated amount in living organisms, and then on ap- 

 propriate access of oxygen water and suitable temperature start 

 intrinsically to expend itself in multiplying cells, in enlarging 

 colloid walls, in increasing the amount of protoplasm, and in 

 gradually transforming the stored foods. Not only so, were 

 such a mass of matter as a trunk of Cycas revoluta, two feet 

 long, charged to fullest capacity with heat, this would be radi- 

 ated into space in a few hours at most, till the trunk became 

 of surrounding temperature; were it stored witJi Hght from any 

 ordinary source of combustion tliis would be radiated out and 



