THE BREATH OF LIFE 



— growths in form like seaweed and polyps and 

 corals and trees. His seeds are fragments of calcium 

 chloride, and his soil is a solution of the alkaline 

 carbonates, phosphates, or silicates. When his seeds 

 are sown in these solutions, we see inert matter ger- 

 minating, " putting forth bud and stem and root and 

 branch and leaf and fruit," precisely as in the living 

 vegetable kingdom. It is not a growth by accretion, 

 as in crystallization, but by intussusception, as in 

 life. These ghostly things exhibit the phenomena of 

 circulation and respiration and nutrition, and a 

 crude sort of reproduction by budding; they repair 

 their injuries, and are able to perform periodic 

 movements, just as does an animal or a plant; they 

 have a period of vigorous youthful growth, of old 

 age, of decay, and of death. In form, in color, in 

 texture, and in cell structure, they imitate so closely 

 the cell structures of organic growth as to suggest 

 something uncanny or diabolical. And yet the au- 

 thor of them does not claim that they are alive. 

 They are not edible, they contain no protoplasm — 

 no starch or sugar or peptone or fats or carbohy- 

 drates. These chemical creations by Dr. Leduc are 

 still dead matter — dead colloids — only one re- 

 move from crystallization; on the road to life, fore- 

 runners of life, but not life. If he could set up the 

 chlorophyllian process in his chemical reactions 

 among inorganic compounds, the secret of life 

 would be in his hands. But only the green leaf can 



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