70 EVOLUTION 



are more like termini than beginnings in 

 material evolution. 



It may be that what we call " living" 

 evolved in Nature's laboratory from ^hai^. 

 ye call "not-living" for though prolonged 

 experiments have led biologists to adhere 

 dogmatically to the dictum "omne vivum e 

 vrm*!,* tJ^is iffjaot inconsistent with supposing 

 that spontaneous generation occurred in 

 favourable conditions very long ago, Ver- 

 worn has elaborated a suggestion due to the 

 great physiologist Pfliiger (1875), that the 

 cyanogen radical (CN). may have been the 

 starting-point of the^proteid molecule siiich 

 part of tin* phy.sira.1 Hfl.gjg 



life. As cyanogen and its compounds arise 

 in an incandescent heat when the necessary 

 nitrogenous compounds are present, they may 

 have been formed ^hile the earth was still 

 aglow; with their property of ready decom- 

 position they were forced into correlation 

 with various other compounds likewise due 

 to the great heat; when water was precipi- 

 tated upon the earth these compounds en- 

 tered into chemical relations with the water 

 and its dissolved salts and gases, and thus 

 originated extremely labile, very simple, un- 

 differentiated living substance, which per- 

 haps fed, as Sir Ray Lankester has suggested, 

 upon "antecedent steps in its own evolution." 



