PHENOMENA AND CONDITIONS OF LIFE 37 



commodity. No wonder that this wheat grew directly after it 

 had been sown. The real wheat from the Pyramids has a dark, 

 almost black, colour and when placed into water dissolves intc 

 a powder. 



It has long been a much debated question whether the vital 

 activity in the resting seed has ceased absolutely or has only 

 been lowered to that point where our senses are not able to 

 perceive it. If life is still existent, then respiration and 

 metabolism must of necessity go on. The following experi- 

 ment by W. Koch seems, however, to prove that this is not the 

 case. 



He placed a large quantity of plant seed into a glass tube, 

 obtained as perfect a vacuum as possible, and then fused both ends 

 of the tube. If respiration had taken place even to the most 

 minute degree, traces of carbondioxide would have been observ- 

 able, but when after several months the tube was opened it was 

 found impossible, even with the most exact methods, to demon- 

 strate the presence of a vestige of carbondioxide. Though life, 

 therefore, had been completely at a standstill, the seeds were 

 nevertheless found to have retained their power of germination. 



It seems to me that no fundamental objection can be raised 

 against this assumption. Just as much as we are not prepared 

 to deny that a falling stone, brought to a halt by an intervening 

 obstacle, will continue to fall as soon as such obstacle has been 

 removed, and is therefore at that moment not at perfect rest 

 but in a state of motion however infinitesimal, just as little 

 cause is there for denying that the functions of life may some- 

 times come to a temporarily absolute standstill. But as we may 

 not call such organisms alive, because life implies the presence 

 of life-functions, nor dead, because they contain within them 

 potential life, we must introduce a new term and call them 

 lifeless or apparently dead (schemtot). 



Preyer vividly illustrates this difference between dead and 

 lifeless by the action of a clock. Whilst the lifeless organism 

 is comparable to a clock, with spring wound and pendulum 

 arrested, but needing only the right impetus to set it in motion, 

 so is the dead animal or plant comparable to a clock, the works 

 of which have been irreparably destroyed. 



The phenomenon of ' dry-coma ' is most remarkable in the 



