224 SYMBIOGENESIS 



it would seem, be formed by carbohydrates under certain con- 

 ditions, as Spencer shrewdly foresaw. 



The pathogenetic transformation of ancestrally accumu- 

 lated biological capital, which I assert frequently to occur in 

 Nature, comes out very strikingly in the case of 

 " Phosphorescence," which forms the subject of Spencer's 

 following paragraphs (19, 20, 21). 



In some phosphorescent animals inhabiting the sea, as in 

 the Pyrosoma and in certain Annelida 



Light seems to be really produced, not by direct reaction on the 

 action of oxygen, but by some indirect reaction involving a transforma- 

 tion of force. . . . The re-distributions of matter in general are 

 accompanied by electrical disturbances ; and there is abundant evidence 

 that electricity is generated during those re-distributions that are ever 

 taking place in organisms. . . The special causes of these phenomena 

 have not yet been determined. 



Besides these general, and not conspicuous, electrical phenomena, 

 which appear to be common to all organisms, vegetable as well as 

 animal, there are certain special and strongly marked ones. I refer, 

 of course, to those which have made the Torpedo and the Gymnotus 

 objects of so much interest. In these creatures we have a genesis of 

 electricity that is not incidental on the performance of their different 

 functions by the different organs ; but one which is itself a function, 

 having an organ appropriate to it. The character of this organ in both 

 these fishes, and its largely-developed connexions with the nervous 

 centres, have raised the suspicion, which various experiments have thus 

 far justified, that in it there takes place a transformation of what we 

 call nerve force into the force known as electricity : this conclusion being 

 more especially supported by the fact that substances, such as morphia 

 and strychnia, which are known to be powerful nervous stimulants, 

 greatly increase the violence and rapidity of the electric discharges. 



I have in previous volumes endeavoured to show that in 

 cases of obvious degeneration (through in-feeding) the 

 phenomena of retrograde redistribution of organic matter 

 (pathogenesis) bear a striking resemblance to those of inorganic 

 redistribution of component forces (dissociation) and this under 

 like predicaments, viz., the presence of impurities. In some 

 instances the disintegration may proceed in such sudden and 

 " explosive*' fashion as to lead to striking electric phenomena. 



