104 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



sorbed into and energizes the increasingly complex colloid 

 molecules, such fulfills the apparent needs of the case. 



Again, in those plants that have reached a still higher and 

 more complex condition by the gradual evolution of chlor- 

 ophyll, if we consider the cylindrical green screen or chrom- 

 atophore of Blue-green Algae to be, as already suggested, at 

 once an absorber, a transformer, and an accumulator of lumic 

 energy, that is there condensed into biotic energy and in ac- 

 cumulating could be expended for the upbuilding of glycogen 

 within the chroma tophore, while a quantity of the same energy, 

 conveyed into the protoplasm, could be used for repairing 

 its waste and for the formation in higher members of the group 

 even, of elementary or evolving chromatin substance, we get 

 a connected and explicable view both of the morphology and 

 of the physiology of such cells. 



If we now accept it as a good working view that chlorophyll- 

 oid protoplasm is an energy transformer, the question at once 

 arises: are there other cases of such transformation amongst 

 plants or animals? Our knowledge in regard to plants is still 

 too limited to verify such, though luminous bacteria and higher 

 fungi suggest the rapid conversion of biotic into lumic energy. 

 But some striking cases occur amongst animals. The electric 

 eel and the torpedo fish both have enormous demonstrable 

 stores of energy, which can be discharged as powerful electric 

 shocks. But such accumulations of energy are not exhibited 

 or discharged by the unirritated fish, which then differs in no 

 way from other species; nor after successive discharges have 

 weakened them does their body differ from that of other fishes, 

 except that they have special "electric organs." Now these 

 consist of connective tissue in which ramify rich supplies of 

 nerves and of blood vessels. The rapid generation of electric 

 energy by them is usually ascribed to transformation of chem- 

 ical substances brought by the blood and decomposed by ner- 

 vous stimuli. But this involves a rapid transfer of definite 

 compounds by the blood, and the chemical transformation 

 of these from a potential chemical into a kinetic electric state. 



In line with other evidences adduced, we would consider, 

 rather, that the electric organs store complex organic molecules 



