THE WONDERS OF LIFE 



tains the cyanogen-radical, and that dead nutritive al- 

 bumin does not. The belief that it is cyanogen which 

 gives its characteristic vital properties to the plasm is 

 supported by a number of analogies that we find to 

 exist between cyanide compounds, especially cyanic acid 

 (C N O H.) and the living albumin. Both bodies are 

 fluid and transparent at a low temperature, while they 

 set at a higher; both of them break up in the presence 

 of water into carbonic acid and ammonia; both produce 

 urea by disassociation (by the intramolecular surround- 

 ing of the atoms, not by direct oxydation). "The 

 similarity of the two substances is so great," says 

 Pfliiger, "that I might describe cyanic acid as a semi- 

 living molecule." Both substances grow in the same 

 way by concatenation of the atoms, homogeneous groups 

 of atoms joining together chain-wise in large masses. 



There is an especial interest in connection with the 

 theory of archigony and its physical basis in the chemi- 

 cal fact that cyanogen and its compounds — cyanide 

 of potassium, cyanic acid, cyanide of hydrogen, etc. 

 — are only formed at incandescent heat; that is to say, 

 when the requisite inorganic nitrogenous compounds 

 are put with glowing coals, or the mixture is heated to 

 incandescence. Other essential constituents of albu- 

 min, such as carburetted hydrogen or alcohol-radical, 

 can be formed synthetically in heat. "Thus," says 

 Pfluger, "nothing is clearer than the possibility of the 

 formation of cyanic compounds when the earth was en- 

 tirely or partially in a state of incandescence or great 

 heat. We see how extraordinarily all the facts of chem- 

 istry point to fire as the force that has produced the con- 

 stituents of albumin by synthesis. Hence life was born 

 from fire, and the chief conditions of its appearance are 

 associated with a time when the earth was a glowing 

 ball of fire. When we remember the incalculably long 

 period in which the surface of the earth was slowly cool- 



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