ORIGIN OF LIFE 39 



It will be observed here that Haeckel does not say 

 where the sulphur and phosphorus are to come from 

 which protoplasm and its nucleus require. 



In referring to the necessity of sunlight, such is only 

 necessary for plants provided with chlorophyll which can 

 live on the inorganic world. Colourless animals and plants, 

 like monera and bacteria, do not require it ; for they can 

 only live upon already prepared organised food. Where 

 this is to come from for his primitive beings Haeckel 

 neglects to tell us, for no such organisms can live upon 

 mineral food. 



According to Haeckel, therefore, protoplasm, the only 

 known substance which can be alive, was originally 

 derived from the inorganic world ; and he does not 

 hesitate to explain from what mineral materials he 

 believes it to have been evolved. We know that it re- 

 quires carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen and sulphur, 

 and we might add phosphorus for the nucleus. Haeckel 

 supplies us with carbonic acid, ammonia and water, but 

 here he forgets the sulphur (though he has previously 

 mentioned it), together with a hypothetical " formative 

 fluid ". What this is, of what it is composed and where 

 it occurred, we are not informed. 



Haeckel then appears to combine these compounds 

 somehow ; for he calls the primitive inorganic substances 

 " nitrocarbonates ". 



Surely it would be strange if carbonic acid and 

 ammonia did not form common " smelling salts " rather 

 than protoplasm ! 



Searching among minerals for one containing the 

 same elements in its composition as protoplasm, we 

 seem to approach it in a comparatively rare one called 

 mascagnite, a product of volcanic action, being found at 

 Etna, Vesuvius and the Lipari Islands. It is described 



