NEW CONCEPTIONS IN SCIENCE 



eggs of other animals would do the same. These 

 results, at first contested and even scouted, have 

 been obtained by other workers in many lands. 

 There is no longer a shadow of doubt that arti- 

 ficial parthenogenesis, as the process is technically 

 termed, is an established fact. 



In a strict sense, the unfertilized egg cannot be 

 termed living matter. The first characteristic of 

 living matter is that it can grow. In other words, 

 here is an organic product, like sugar, or starch, 

 or the fats, which, treated chemically, can be 

 developed to a certain stage artificially. It was 

 near to a realization of the dreams of Berthelot 

 and Claude Bernard, ay, and of many another 

 the manufacture of life in the laboratory. Cer- 

 tainly it was one of the vital discoveries in the 

 history of physiology. 



A close study of all these novel and unheard-of 

 reactions, the heart which may be started or 

 stopped with a pinch of this salt or that; the 

 muscles which may be made to beat like a heart; 

 the egg which may be vivified by chemical means, 

 revealed the common chain that seems to link 

 them all. One of the riddles which faced the older 

 chemists, those of half a century ago, was the 

 curious fact that, when the atoms come to com- 

 bine with others, some of them seem, so to speak, 

 to have but a single arm with which to take hold, 



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