REFERENCES AND QUOTATIONS, 321 
line molecule, attracting the homogeneous atoms dissolved in the 
mother wather; and they now likewise coalesce in the formation of 
similar molecules. The albuminous granule thus grows and trans- 
forms itself into a homogeneous organic individual, a structureless 
Woner or mass of plasma, like a Protameba, &c. Owing to the 
easy divisibility of its substance, this moner constantly tends to- 
wards the dissolution of its recently consolidated individuality, but 
when the constantly preponderating absorption of new substance 
outweighs the tendency to disintegration, it is able to preserve life 
by the exchange of material. The homogeneous organic individual, 
or moner, grows by means of imbibition (nutrition) only until the 
attractive power of the centre no longer suffices to hold the whole 
mass together. In consequence of the preponderating divergent 
movements of the molecules in different directions, two or more 
centres of attraction are now formed in the homogeneous plasma, 
which henceforth act attractively on the individual substance of the 
simple mould, and thereby induce its fission, or partition, into two 
or more portions (reproduction). Each part forthwith rounds itself 
again into an albuminous individual, or mass of plasma, and the 
eternal process begins again, of attraction and disruption of the 
molecules, producing the phenomena of exchange of substance, or 
nutrition, and reproduction.” 
Relying on the known peculiarities of the combinations of 
carbon, Haeckel has attributed to this substance the most im- 
portaht part in his representation of the first development of life 
and the physiological phenomena of the lowest organisms. This 
is the “carbon theory” so strongly deprecated by his antagonists. 
Minds would be less heated on the subject were it remembered 
that a refutation of this “adventurous attempt,” as Haeckel terms 
it, to assist the idea of genesis, would not change a hair in the 
compulsory logical necessity of acknowledging the evocation of 
life by natural means. The arguments against the carbon theory 
have been developed, among others, by Preyer, “ Ueber die Ertor- 
schung des Lebens (Jena, 1873). It is shown that carbon, in its 
present terrestrial conditions, points almost exclusively to organic 
origin, and, as yet, no source of carbon has been demonstrated 
adequate for the first formation of living bodies on the earth. 
55 A, R. Wallace, The Malay Archipelago (3rd ed.: London, 
