COSMIC EXCHANGE OF MATTER AND LIFE 439 



absolute zero. The effect would be precisely the same as if 

 they were frozen in solid hydrogen. The vital activities are 

 simply a function of temperature, and at this intensity of cold 

 they practically cease. Dr. Allen Macfadyen, of the Jenner 

 Institute in London, has shown that germs and spores may be 

 subjected to this infra- freezing process without being " killed." 

 They resume their activities, pernicious or otherwise, when they 

 are thawed out. 



Let us conceive that these frozen germs or spores reach 

 another planet whereon no life whatever exists. All of the same 

 material, the planets probably all follow more or less the same 

 course of evolution. So soon, then, as they have cooled off 

 sufficiently from their glowing state to form a crust, they con- 

 stitute a possible milieu of life. It is reasonable to suppose that 

 as soon as the heated vapour of these hot planets has condensed 

 to water, and a* carbonic acid-laden atmosphere is formed, the 

 lowest forms of plant life, the bacteria, may thrive and develop. 

 It is known that some forms at least can sustain a temperature 

 of 90 C. or very near to the boiling-point. 



This is the kernel. Once it is planted upon a cooling globe, 

 we may readily conceive the latter to become the theatre of such 

 a wondrous vital activity as that which in aeons gone our earth 

 has been the scene. 



It is perhaps worthy of note that the idea of a cosmic dis- 

 tribution of the elementary forms of life adds nothing to, as it 

 subtracts little from, the mystery of life itself. It in no wise 

 precludes the possibility of spontaneous generation upon the 

 earth or elsewhere, incessant or sporadic, now or at some distant 

 anterior time. It in no wise precludes the possibility of the 

 production of life in the laboratory. It may be a fact that no 

 such thing as spontaneous generation has ever taken place upon 

 the earth. It is even conceivable that it has never taken place 

 historically within the cosmos. The peculiar molecular com- 

 plication which displays the phenomena of life may be co- 

 existent in time with the universe itself. Such seems more or 

 less the view of Arrhenius. 



Be this as it may, we have no more present reason to infer 

 this than to suppose that sulphide of iron, or some other more 

 or less complex inorganic compound, was never formed syn- 

 thetically upon the earth. Sulphides and other compounds are 



