Life 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



390 



life. He took his flasks into the caves under 

 the Observatory of Paris, and found the still 

 air in these caves devoid of generative 

 power. These and other experiments, carried 

 out with a severity perfectly obvious to the 

 instructed scientific reader, and accom- 

 panied by a logic equally severe, restored the 

 conviction that, even in these lower reaches 

 of the scale of being, life does not appear 

 without the operation of antecedent life. 

 TYNDALL Floating Matter of the Air, essay 

 5, p. 285. (A., 1895.) 



1903. LIFE NOT IN MATERIAL 

 ELEMENTS The Water Is Left, the Wave 

 Goes On Spirit Not Revealed to Sense. 

 Just as the flame remains the same in ap- 

 pearance, and continues to exist with the 

 same form and structure, altho it draws 

 every minute fresh combustible vapor, and 

 fresh oxygen from the air, into the vortex of 

 its ascending current; and just as the wave 

 goes on in unaltered form, and is yet being 

 reconstructed every moment from fresh par- 

 ticles of water, so also in the living being, it 

 is not the definite mass of substance, which 

 now constitutes the body, to which the con- 

 tinuance of the individual is attached. For 

 the material of the body, like that of the 

 flame, is subject to continuous and compara- 

 tively rapid change a change the more 

 rapid, the livelier the activity of the organs 

 in question. Some constituents are renewed 

 from day to day, some from month to month, 

 and others only after years. That which 

 continues to exist as a particular individual 

 is like the flame and the wave only the 

 form of motion which continually attracts 

 fresh matter into its vortex and expels the 

 old. The observer with a deaf ear only 

 recognizes the vibration of sound as long as 

 it is visible and can be felt, bound up with 

 heavy matter. Are our senses, in reference 

 to life, like the deaf ear in this respect? 

 HELMHOLTZ Popular Lectures, lect. 4, p. 

 195. (L. G. & Co., 1898.) 



1904. LIFE OF WANDERING GERMS 



Unseen Perils Long-enduring Menace of 

 Evil Once Set Afloat The Source of Life 

 Infected. So essentially does the bacterial 

 content of air depend upon the facility with 

 which certain bacteria withstand drying 

 that Dr. Eduardo Germano has addressed 

 himself first to drying various pathogenic 

 species and then to mixing the dried residue 

 with sterilized dust and observing to what 

 degree the air becomes infected. Typhoid 

 appears to withstand comparatively little 

 desiccation without losing its virulence. 

 Nevertheless, it is able to retain vitality in 

 a semidried condition, and it is owing to 

 this circumstance in all probability that it 

 possesses such power of infection. Diph- 

 theria [is], on the other hand, capable of 

 lengthened survival outside the body. . . . 

 This is not the case with cholera or plague. 

 Dr. Germano classifies bacteria, as a result 

 of his researches, into three groups: first, 

 those like plague, typhoid, and cholera, which 



cannot survive drying for more than a few 

 hours ; second, those like the bacilli of diph- 

 theria, . . . which can withstand it for a 

 longer period; thirdly, those like tubercle, 

 which can very readily resist drying for 

 months and yet retain their virulence. . . . 

 Miquel has recently demonstrated that soil 

 bacteria or their spores can remain alive in 

 hermetically sealed tubes for as long a time 

 as sixteen years. Even at the end of that 

 period the soil inoculated into a guinea-pig 

 produced tetanus. NEWMAN Bacteria, ch. 3, 

 p. 108. (G. P. P., 1899.) 



1905. LIFE ON THE MOONS OF 

 JUPITER Glorious Aspect of Jupiter as Seen 

 from His Satellites The Giant Planet a 

 Minor Sun. Why should not the moons of 

 Jupiter be inhabited, instead of Jupiter 

 himself, and Jupiter be appointed to com- 

 pensate them (not they him) for the small- 

 ness of the direct supply of solar light and 

 heat? . . . For to them the sun is a 

 minute body, showing a disk scarcely equal 

 to one twenty-fifth of the sun's disk as we 

 see him; but the glorious disk of Jupiter, 

 varying at the several moons from an area 

 1,600 times as great as their sun to an area 

 35,000 times his, and marked by the won- 

 derfully beautiful colors of which our tele- 

 scopes afford a faint idea, must be an ama- 

 zing object of contemplation. The changes 

 also which take place in his aspect as he 

 turns round on his axis, and also as real 

 changes take place in his cloud envelope, 

 must be singularly impressive and suggest- 

 ive. We may well believe that if there are 

 reasoning creatures on the worlds which 

 circle around Jupiter, they have as good 

 reason as we ourselves to say, " The heavens 

 declare the glory of God, the firmament 

 showeth his handiwork." PROCTOR Expanse 

 of Heaven, pp. 88-93. (L. G. & Co., 1897.) 



1906. LIFE, PHYSICAL, COOPERA- 

 TION IN The Human Body a Colony of Cell- 

 workers Division Resulting in Harmony. 

 If we think of the countless operations 

 which have to be undertaken from hour to 

 hour to maintain our bodies in action, we 

 may begin to realize what perfect coopera- 

 tion really means, and what this colonial 

 constitution of ours implies. For example, 

 saliva has to be secreted, for the purpose of 

 digestion, in the mouth, and for other func- 

 tions as well. This fluid is supplied by 

 three pairs of salivary glands. Now, the 

 working and essential parts of these glands 

 are living cells, which, out of the blood (as 

 the raw material) supplied to the glands, 

 secrete saliva, which is the manufactured 

 product. Again, tears have perpetually to 

 be made for washing the eyes. This secre- 

 tion is supplied by a couple of tear glands. 

 Here, again, are cells, different from those 

 of the salivary glands, and making out of 

 the blood a very different secretion to that 

 of the mouth. The cells of the gastric 

 glands of the stomach make, from the blood, 

 gastric juice. . . . The brain-cells guide 



