H THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 



to the author to be midway between the organic and 

 the inorganic was cyanogen, but since the results 

 of his experiments upon this subject he has been 

 inclined to regard the bodies he has observed as 

 the products of radium and bouillon to be the 

 nearest approach hitherto observed between visibly 

 living and apparently not living nature. In a 

 word, on the border-line between what we call 

 living and that which we regard, or have regarded 

 as dead. 



They have been called radiobes, on account of 

 their origin from radium and the many properties 

 which they have in common with microbes. 



An important portion of this work will be devoted 

 to their method of production, properties and position 

 as it seems to be, between the mineral and vegetable 

 kingdoms. 



The views which have led up to these experiments 

 may be of interest to follow. They first originated 

 in the theory of Professor Pfliiger, of Bonn, that 

 cyanogen was probably the origin of living things. 

 By its chemical reactions, by the part it plays in vital 

 actions, the striking resemblance of its chemical 

 behaviour to that of living proteid, together with the 

 fact that it is formed at a high temperature when 

 primitive life may have originated, are all of them- 

 selves of intense interest and highly suggestive of 

 the manner in which the elementary processes of life 

 may have appeared. Not the least remarkable, once 

 more, being the amount of internal energy which the 

 unstable molecule of cyanogen has stored up in it and 



