BY WILLIAM J. BYRAM. 25 



zoophytes. Some representatives of them are to be found on all 

 coasts in rocl\ pools left by the tide or attached to sea weed, and 

 to the unaided eye resemble small pieces of cotton thread. I 

 have photographed a portion of one of them. They are like 

 colonies of hydrae, for the bells, or hydranths, as they are called, 

 are each of them a zooid or living being, though they are attached 

 to a common stalk. 



I cannot pursue this subject further, it is too extensive, and 

 I must be content with very few concluding remarks. As I have 

 said, we cannot answer the question, " What is life?" but if we 

 are even to approximate to a solution of the problem we must 

 divest our minds of the idea that it is something apart from other 

 phenomena, something unique and supernatural. It is a mystery 

 in the same sense that electricity is a mystery, or that gravitation 

 is a mystery ; its causes are so recondite that they elude our 

 limited powers of comprehension. We must hold, provisionally, 

 that it is the attribute of protoplasm, the resultant of the 

 interaction — the intricate chemical change and interchange of 

 the porteids of which that most instable complex consists. We 

 have no knowledge of life apart from protoplasm ; such a thing 

 is inconceivable. Yet we must frankly admit that we do not 

 know what life is or what its origin has been. As far as the 

 precise experiments of the late Professors Tyndall and Huxley, 

 and of the eminent biologist. Dr. Dallinger, extend, spontaneous 

 generation or abiogenesis has been negatived. As far as we can 

 see under existing conditions all life comes from previous life. 

 But it must be remembered that precise as they were, these 

 experiments are essentially imperfect. They only prove that at 

 the present time, in a small confined space, and under existing 

 conditions, all life is the derivative of existing life. When we 

 take all the analogies into consideration, there is a strong 

 probability that there is no line of demarcation between the 

 living and the inorganic ; but that, if not now, at anyrate under 

 different conditions in the geological past, protoplasm, with its 

 attribute life, originated from the non-living. This is, indeed, 

 an irresistible corollary from the law of evolution, otherwise we 

 must ascribe the first appearance of life to a special fiat of the 

 Creative Power, a theory which is not only unthinkable, but 

 which has been beaten all along the line. More and more, too, 

 the mechanical theory of life is winning its way, despite old 



