MORE ABOUT SUSPENDED ANIMATION 183 



course, impossible to guarantee that no accident, no 

 unforeseen change in the surroundings, shall take place 

 and destroy in one way or another the experiment. But 

 the arrest of all change, such as goes on in life, has been, 

 in many experiments, maintained under careful supervision 

 and protection for several months, and yet life has been 

 resumed when the cause arresting chemical change has 

 been removed. The presumption, then, is in favour of 

 the possibility of the arrest being maintained for an un- 

 limited period, and yet at any time being resumed when 

 the arresting cause (cold or dryness) is removed. 



Before what we may call " the suspensory action " of 

 very low temperatures had become generally known, the 

 question occurred as to whether seeds kept in a dry 

 condition for several months, or even years, and yet 

 capable of germination when placed in moist earth, are 

 during their dry condition undergoing any chemical 

 changes. The matter presented itself in this way. 

 The dry seeds can germinate when sown, therefore 

 they are not dead, but living. According to various 

 physiologists and philosophers (e.g., Herbert Spencer), 

 life is a continuous adjustment of internal to external 

 relations. Burdon Sanderson, the Oxford professor of 

 Physiology, declared that " life is a state of ceaseless 

 change." If this is a correct conception, and if by " living " 

 we mean, as the great Oxford English Dictionary tells 

 us, " manifesting the property called life," then the seeds 

 which, though dry, are still " living " or " alive " or 

 " endowed with life," should yield some evidence of the 

 "ceaseless change" (by which is meant chemical change) 

 of which, as things not dead but living, they are supposed 

 to be the seat. The late Dr. George Romanes published 

 in 1893 some experiments on this matter. We know that 

 free oxygen is very generally (though not universally) 

 necessary for the continual chemical changes which the 



