THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



157 



emselvesM 



U; 



aracteristic-: 



' (Amaba je 

 ■ommon foiE 

 servers to \ 

 ysted Amffik 

 others, giit 

 ' and these is 

 lowly-movr 



oreover, w^ 



owly-nio*, 

 ■ times, wH^' 



pic powefv- 

 ,ers of siDiP-'i 

 , of 1^^' 



ms 



haracter5 ^ 



of 



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4 



such an amount of community in nature between 

 Amcebse, Monads, and the matter of a Fungus, as to 

 make it much easier for us to believe what the experi- 

 ments indicate, viz. that Torula corpuscles, the simplest 

 Amcehaj and tailed Monads^ may all originate by a pro- 

 cess of Archebiosis, and that a certain interchange- 



J 



ability exists between them— so that a corpuscle of a 

 certain size may slowly expand into one or other of 



th 



cular movements gradually assume different modes of 



organic forms, according as its internal mole- 



action. 



But we still have to allude to other primordial forms 

 which have been met with in our experimental flasks, — 

 I allude to the green-coloured Pediastrese, and bodies 

 resembling the simplest Desmids, which have been 

 found in the solutions containing iron and ammonic 



hv 



citrate. In many respe 

 of the highest interest, 

 with heated fluids 



matter 



In about 200 experiments 



have never 



in closed vessels. I 



found even a fragment of green protoplasm except 

 on five occasions. Each time actual organisms were 

 found more or less similar to one another, and in each 

 case a salt of iron existed as one of the constituents of 

 the solution^. As iron is one of the constituents of 

 chlorophyll, this correspondence is as much in accord- 

 ance with the de novo origin of such organisms, as it is 



^ vSee vol. i. pp. 364, 365, and pp. 448-454. 



