TRANSLATORS PREFACE 



Professor Leduc's Theorie Phynico-chimique de In Vie cf 

 Generations Spontanees has excited a good deal of attention, 

 and not a little opposition, on the Continent. As recently 

 as 1907 the Academie des Sciences excluded from its Comptes 

 Rendus the report of these experimental researches on diffusion 

 and osmosis, because it touched too closely on the burning 

 question of spontaneous generation. 



As the author points out, Lamarck's early evolutionary 

 hypothesis was killed by opposition and neglect, and had to 

 be reborn in England before it obtained universal acceptance 

 as the Darwinian Theory. Not unnaturally, therefore, he 

 turns for an appreciation of his work to the free air and 

 wide horizon of the English-speaking countries. 



He has entitled his book "The Mechanism of Life," 

 since however little we may know of the origin of life, 

 we may vet hope to get a glimpse of the machinery, and 

 perhaps even hear the whirr of the wheels in Nature's work- 

 shop. The subject is of entrancing interest to the biologist 

 and the physician, quite apart from its bearing on the 

 question of spontaneous generation. Whatever view may 

 be entertained by the different schools of thought as to the 

 nature and significance of life, all alike will welcome this 

 new and important contribution to our knowledge of the 

 mechanism by which Nature constructs the bewildering variety 

 of her forms. 



There is, I think, no more wonderful and illuminating 

 spectacle than that of an osmotic growth, — a crude lump 

 of brute inanimate matter germinating before our very eyes, 

 putting forth bud and stem and root and branch and leaf 

 and fruit, with no stimulus from germ or seed, without even 



