CONTENTS xi 



PAQB 



gelatin bouillon — Other globular bodies produced by gum 

 and gelatin — Reasons for supposing radiobes are not bacteria 

 — Negative experiments with cyanogen — Pfluger's theory — 

 Nature of the cyanogen molecules and of the radium mole- 

 cules — Dubois' vacuolides not radiobes — Sachs's theory of 

 colloid bodies : that they are crystals asymmetrically arranged 

 — Experiments of Leduc, Butschli, and others — IDiscussion 

 of Pasteur's results and their bearing on the present experi- 

 ments — Radiobes and primitive life 90 



CHAPTER VII 



ON ARTIFICIAL CELLS AND AHTIFICIAL LIFE 



I 



Nature of the bodies produced by radium — von Schron's petro- 

 blasts — Apparent life in young crystals — Bodies observed 

 by Quincke — Foam-cells — Cellular protoplasm, how it may 

 have been formed — Sir William Ramsay's helium bubbles 

 — How these may be formed and what their behavioui' 

 would be — M. Raphael Dubois and mineral cultures or 

 vacuolides produced by barium salts — Experiments with 

 barium and other salts — The peculiar nature of uranium cul- 

 tures — Whether it is radio-activity that produces the effect 

 and in what way — It is not the emitted rays a, /3, or y ; but 

 probably slow-moving rays— Structure of such artificial 

 cells — Their sensitiveness to electrical and chemical stimuli 

 — Their Parthenogenesis — Work of Loeb — Mode of sub- 

 division probably similar 113 



CHAPTER VIII 



ON THE STRUCTURE OF CELLS, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL, AND 

 THE SOURCE OF THE ENERGY OF VITAL PLUX 



Distinction between artificial and natural life — Morphology of 

 cells — Vital process essentially a metabolism — Complexity 

 of cell structure and potentiality of cell — The vital process 

 as distinct from complexity of structure — The nucleus and 

 Karyokinesis — Max Verworn on structure as result of 

 metabolism — Whether his views may not be modified in the 

 light of more recent ideas of the nature of solid and liquid 

 bodies — Difficulties in studying structure of living cell — 

 Cellular structure imparted by reagents — The ultimate or 

 nth. nucleus — Its probable nature, an aggregate of electrons 

 like a radio-active element — Internal energy of living matter 

 thus stored up in the sether — This may fit in as a physical 

 and dynamical explanation of Sir Oliver Lodge's immaterial 

 source of energy in living organisms, thus apparently in- 

 dependent of material connections, but really subject to 

 the universal law of the conservation of Energy 132 



