118 The Bible of Nature 



as liquid upon the earth these compounds entered 

 into chemical relations with the water and its 

 dissolved salts and gases, and thus originated ex- 

 tremely labile, very simple, undifferentiated living 

 substance. 



Professor E. Ray Lankester, in his article, 

 "Protozoa," in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," 

 makes the suggestion, "that a vast amount of al- 

 buminoids and other such compounds had been 

 brought into existence by those processes which 

 culminated in the development of the first proto- 

 plasm, and it seems therefore likely enough that 

 the first protoplasm fed upon these antecedent 

 steps in its own evolution." 



Dr. H. Charlton Bastian suggests, in regard to 

 the first origin of living matter upon the earth, that 

 the nitrate of ammonia which is known to be pro- 

 duced in the air during thunder-storms, and is dis- 

 covered in the thunder-shower, may have played 

 an important part in the mixture of ingredients 

 from which the hypothetical natural synthesis of 

 living matter was effected. 



Mr. J. Butler Burke postulates original vital 

 units or " bio-elements," which " may have existed 

 throughout the universe for an almost indefinite 

 time," which are probably "elements possessing 

 many of the chemical properties of carbon and the 

 radio-active properties of the more unstable ele- 

 ments," and which, by interacting on otherwise 



