1 84 SECRETS OF EARTH AND SEA 



minutest as well as the largest plants and animals carry 

 on. Romanes enclosed a quantity of dry seeds in glass 

 tubes, from which he pumped out all gas as completely 

 as possible — that is to say, all except one-millionth of 

 the original volume. He also expelled all oxygen by 

 replacing it by other gases. As a result of this treatment, 

 continued for as much as fifteen months, he found that 

 neither a high vacuum nor subsequent exposure for twelve 

 months in separate instances to oxygen or to hydrogen, 

 or nitrogen, or carbon monoxide, or carbon dioxide, or 

 hydrogen sulphide, or the vapour of ether or of chloroform, 

 had any effect on the subsequent germinative power of the 

 seeds employed. These experiments proved that anything 

 like respiration by ordinary gaseous exchange with the 

 atmosphere was not going on in the seeds, and that if 

 they are the seat of " ceaseless change " because not dead, 

 the changes must be chemical interactions of some kind 

 or other within their protoplasm. 



The keeping of seeds and also of bacteria for days and 

 even months — at temperatures as low as loo degrees below 

 zero centigrade — and their subsequent resumption of life, 

 has removed the possibility (not excluded by Romanes) 

 of the occurrence of chemical interactions within the 

 substance of these organisms preserved during long 

 periods of time, and yet not ceasing to be what is ordinarily 

 called " alive," or endowed with " life." It is time that we 

 should definitely abandon Herbert Spencer's and Burdon 

 Sanderson's definitions or verbal characterizations of 

 " life." The word " life " is commonly and properly used 

 to designate the condition of a "living thing" or a thing 

 which is "alive." A thing which has lost life — that is, 

 which was living, but is so no more, and cannot be 

 " restored to life " or resuscitated — is, in correct English, 

 said to have "died," or to be "dead." The motionless, 

 unchanging frozen seed or bacterium, which resumes its 



