WHAT is LIFE? 135 



The large green dragonfly, Anax junius Drury, is 

 very abundant to-day. I pick with the fingers from 

 the leaves of the saw palmetto a dozen or more. 



A shower at this season, such as we had this morn- 

 ing, brings out the insects and other forms of life 

 which inhabit a sandy region like this. An hour after 

 its close life is everywhere. One can scarcely lift a 

 chip from the ground, a piece of bark from a fallen 

 tree, or gaze upon a leaf or flower without finding 

 some form of worm, mollusk, insect, or higher form 

 of life. As I write, a small black Lampyrid beetle, 

 Polemius sp. ?, alights upon my hand and crawls to 

 and fro across its surface. I put him in a bottle, and 

 within a minute or two the life that was within him 

 yields to the fumes of the deadly cyanide, and ceases 

 forever. What is that life ? Long has mortal man, 

 the highest of all living things, studied and pondered 

 o'er this question, yet it remains unanswered. If 

 ever answered, it will be by the science of chemistry, 

 which asserts that that which we call "life/ 7 be it in 

 plant or be it in animal, is but the manifestation of 

 the workings of that king of natural forces, cheimsm ; 

 that when the elements in the living laboratories, the 

 cells of the organism, cease for an instant to combine, 

 the nascent power which they possessed at the begin- 

 ning of that instant is gone forever affinity ends 

 what we call "death 77 ensues, and the elements go back 

 once more to Mother Earth, to be used again by some 

 succeeding organism. And yet, some of the forms 



