THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 235 



Thus we have in all, five principal processes or modes 

 of origin of living units, which in each case may or may 

 not, by virtue of subsequent developmental processes, 

 assume the e cell ' form : 



Life-origination Archeblosls. 



Life-fusion Biocrasis. 



Life-division Biodi crests. 



Life-renewal Biocxnosts. 



Life-transmission Bioparadosis. 



Although, however, we have arrived at a very strong 

 presumption that specks of living protoplasm are 

 evolved de novo in certain fluids within the body, it 

 will doubtless at first be said by many that such an 

 occurrence affords no instance of a passage of the 

 not-living into the living, because the phenomenon 

 takes place in a fluid which is already endowed with 

 Life. Let us not deceive ourselves, however, by any 

 inconclusive assumption. The organic fluids pertain- 

 ing to higher animals and plants can be said to 

 live only because they constitute parts of living organ- 

 isms. But is this enough? The several fluids have 

 each peculiarities of their own, and are certainly 

 very different from one another in their degree of 

 elaboration. Thus, when dead organic matter in the 

 shape of food is introduced into the stomach of an 



mode of origin of the zoospores of Conferva area, and of the re- 

 productive units of certain Amoebae, as described by Nicolet, may 

 perhaps be regarded as instances of Bioparadosis with multiple products 

 instead of with the origination of a single reproductive unit. 



