,875-1876.] i8j 



On 2nd February, the President, Rev. William Macllwaine, 

 D.D., in the Chair, a paper on " The Beginnings of Life" was read 

 by Mr. W. J. Browne, M.A. 



The paper treated of some of the lower forms of living matter, 

 of their relations to inorganic matter and to one another, and of 

 the question in debate between the two schools of biologists as 

 to the origin of life. The reader showed that the definitions 

 hitherto given of life are defective, and leave it as much a mystery 

 as ever. Life being an abstract term can be satisfactorily explained 

 only by considering the material substances in which it inheres. 

 Now, the differences which distinguish living from non-living 

 bodies may be summed up in the characteristic functions of nutri- 

 tion and reproduction, and in certain relations to the surrounding 

 world. Living bodies grow by assimilating the particles of their 

 food to their own material, they have the power of producing other 

 living bodies, and they have some property inherent in them of 

 resisting the physical and chemical agencies which act on them 

 in common with inorganic matter. Two theories put forward to 

 explain the nature of life were briefly referred to — the physical, 

 by which life is regarded as a form of energy or motion, and 

 co-ordinate with heat, light, and electricity ; and the vital, which 

 regards life as a separate principle, different in kind, and not 

 merely in degree, from the physical forces. Various typical forms 

 of living bodies were next described — the Torula, or yeast plant, 

 the cause of fermentation, as the type of fungi ; the Protococcus, 

 which forms the green scum on walls, roofs, and trees, after rain, 

 as the type of green plants ; and the Amoeba, or proteus animalcule, 

 as the type of animals. The two first are characterised as plant- 

 cells, by possessing a mass of protoplasm enclosed in a cellulose 

 sac ; the last as an animal consisting of a mere mass of living, 

 moving, apparently structureless, protoplasm. Of aggregations 

 of such cells as the Amoeba the animal body is composed, and 

 almost perfect specimens of the Amoeba may be obtained from 

 the colourless corpuscles of the blood, showing our affinity to 

 and identity with the very lowest forms of life. Bacteria were 



