464 CHEMICAL DISCOVERY AND INVENTION 



fifty times as rapid as its fixation by strong caustic potash, which 

 is practically instantaneous. 



The proposition that living matter is being generated afresh 

 during every day of sunshine from mere mineral matter at the 

 present time and through all the past ages of the world since the 

 idawn of life is an assumption which can never be proved. It is 

 also unnecessary if the object were only to account for the con- 

 tinuance of the efflorescence of living forms which cover the 

 surface of the earth. The question to be met relates to the 

 initial act or process by which life was first established on this 

 globe, and to do this it is necessary to recall the conditions 

 prevailing on the earth's surface when in the beginning the 

 globe had cooled down sufficiently to allow of the formation 

 not only of a solid crust, but the deposition of water in the liquid 

 form and its retention at a temperature far below the boiling- 

 point. The materials then available, beside the solid silicates, 

 oxides, carbonates, etc., of the crust, would be water, gaseous 

 oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide, with possibly small quanti- 

 ties of ammonia and sulphuretted hydrogen. Possibly some 

 volatile compound of phosphorus might be formed among the 

 multitudinous products of chemical changes going on, but this 

 would be speedily removed from the atmosphere by oxidation 

 and fixed in the solid crust in the form of phosphate. Among the 

 products formed by the action of water on the silicates and other 

 compounds containing metals there would doubtless be an 

 ample supply of colloidal substances suspended in the waters 

 or deposited in crevices of the crust, and some of these would 

 doubtless be qualified to act as catalysts in promoting the forma- 

 tion of carbon compounds from the carbon dioxide which at that 

 period would be found as a copious ingredient in the primeval 

 atmosphere. At the time imagined the fixation of the carbon 

 which afterwards took place by the action of vegetation and its 

 replacement by an equal bulk of oxygen, had not begun. That 

 carbon was afterwards withdrawn and stored up in the beds of 

 coal and in the forests of living trees with which so large a part 

 of the earth is clothed. 



We have seen how, if Professor Moore's results are to be ac- 

 cepted as conclusive, formaldehyde and consequently some 

 carbohydrate might be brought into existence by the co-opera- 

 tion of the atmosphere, the water, and some colloid constituent 

 of the solid crust. There would thus be provided one ingredient 



