ORGANIC CHEMISTRY 467 



lum would develop into an indefinite mass the form of which 

 would depend on the rate at which supplies were furnished or 

 conditions favourable. For how can chemistry and physics 

 explain heredity ? The seed of wheat contains within itself the 

 incentive to produce a plant of the order of grasses, and no 

 matter how it may be cultivated or neglected it never produces 

 anything else. 



Consider again the propagation of the animal races by the 

 sexual process, and there can be no fear of contradiction in the 

 statement that in the whole range of physical and chemical 

 phenomena there is no ground for even a suggestion of an 

 explanation. The mammalian ovum consists of a small cell 

 about T^ inch in diameter, while the spermatozoon is a far more 

 minute body. The progeny which results from their interaction 

 exhibits, more or less obviously, the characteristics of both the 

 immediate parents or even of earlier generations. The bodily 

 size, form, markings, and colours, as well as in the higher animals, 

 the mental peculiarities of ancestors are reproduced. It may 

 fairly be asked what chemical or physical property can be 

 transmitted by any such process, or could conceivably be so 

 stored up and utilised ? 



Too much has been made of the curious observations by J. 

 Loeb and others on the supposed fertilisation of the ova of sea 

 urchins by immersion in solutions of sodium or magnesium 

 salts, or by a stimulus provided by an electric current. These 

 observations, even if not open to suspicion on account of the 

 free diffusion of the spermatozoa of these and other creatures 

 in the surrounding water, prove nothing of importance in rela- 

 tion to the question now under discussion, which is the initia- 

 tion of organic living matter from inorganic lifeless material. The 

 ovum contains within itself the potentialities of a new generation, 

 and the stimulus necessary to bring them into operation may 

 well be derived from various sources in the case of creatures so 

 low in the scale and so little removed from forms which are 

 habitually reproduced by subdivision. 



This is not the place to pursue such a discussion further. It 

 will be sufficient to add that those who accept the purely material- 

 istic doctrine as to the origin of life have before them the neces- 

 sity of establishing a vast number of facts before such doctrine 

 can be made generally acceptable to the scientific world. The 

 progress which has been made in the desired direction is far 



