KEFERENCKS AND OUOTATIONS. 32 I 



line mo'ieLLilc, attracting the homogeneous atoms dissolved in ilic 

 mother wather ; and they now Hkcwise coalesce in the fonnation of 

 similar molecules. The albuminous granule tlius grows and trans- 

 forms itself into a homogeneous organic individual, a structureless 

 moner or mass of plasma, like a Protama:ba, &c. Owing to the 

 easy divisibility of its substance, this moner constantly tends to- 

 wards the dissolution of its recently consolidated individuality, but 

 when the constantly preponderating absorption of new substance 

 outweighs the tendency to disintegration, it is able to preserve life 

 by the exchange of material. The homogeneous organic individual, 

 or moner, grows by means of imbibition (nutrition) only until the 

 attractive power of the centre no longer suffices to hold the whole 

 mass together. In consequence of the preponderating divergent 

 movements of the molecules in different directions, two or more 

 centres of attraction are now formed in the homogeneous plasma, 

 which henceforth act attractively on the individual substance of the 

 simple mould, and thereby induce its fission, or partition, into two 

 or more portions (reproduction). Each part forthwith rounds itself 

 again into an albuminous individual, or mass of plasma, and the 

 eternal process begins again, of attraction and disruption of the 

 molecules, producing the phenomena of exchange of substance, or 

 nutrition, and reproduction." 



Relying on the known peculiarities of the combinations of 

 carbon, Haeckel has attributed to this substance the most im- 

 portant part in his representation of the first development of life 

 and the phybiological phenomena of the lowest organisms. This 

 is the "carbon theory" so strongly deprecated by his antagonists. 

 Minds would be less heated on the subject were it remembered 

 that a refutation of this "adventurous attempt," as Haeckel terms 

 it, to assist the idea of genesis, would not change a hair in the 

 compulsory logical necessity of acknowledging the evocation of 

 life by natural means. The arguments against the carbon theory 

 have been developed, among others, by Preyer, " Ueber die Krtor- 

 schung des Lebens (Jena, 1873). ^^ is shown that carbon, in its 

 present terrestrial conditions, points almost exclusively to organic 

 origin, and, as yet, no source of carbon has been demonstrated 

 adequate for the first formation of living bodies on the earth. 



•>5A. R. Wallace, The Malay Archipelago (3rd cd. : London, 



