42 PEOPERTIES OF LIVING MATTER 



It may be asked, in conclusion, whether this is a property sui 

 generis, or whether it may be manifested by any kinds of not-living 

 matter ? And here again it must be said that even what appears 

 to be such a peculiarly vital phenomenon as spontaneous fission 

 may be manifested by some kinds of not-living matter. 



It has been long known that ' myeline ' a very complex fatty 

 compound obtainable from yolk of egg and from nerve substance 

 will, when immersed in water, as Montgomery ' has shown, give 

 rise to cell-like bodies and also protrude delicate tubes which bend 

 in all directions. But Robin " long ago showed more remarkable 

 processes in the way of actual fission and amoeboid changes in 

 shape occurring in other fatty extracts, derived from dead animal 

 substances. These phenomena were especially marked with 

 certain fatty extracts obtained from the blood, when mixed with 

 water or with albuminous fluids. " From masses of these extracts," 

 Robin says, " there may be seen projecting and elongating under 

 the eyes of the observer filaments having a tubular appearance, 

 either straight, bent, undulating or spiral in their arrangement, 

 like those of various anatomical elements. Sometimes the ex- 

 tremities of some of these tubes become constricted and moniliform, 

 and the constrictions go on so as to produce complete division, 

 with separation of httle hollow spheres, just as in the production 

 of conidia from the tubular cells of various Moulds, Oidium, etc. 

 . . . When little spheres, or drops with a wavy outline, ate formed, 

 these may be seen under the microscope, not to bend now in this 

 now in that direction like the tubular filaments just referred to, but 

 incessantly to change their form, as a result of alternate partial 

 constrictions and dilatations. These constrictions or contractions 

 even go so far as to produce a complete division of certain globules 

 into two, in the same way that one may see division brought about 

 by gradual constriction in certain vegetal or animal cells." Such 

 fatty extracts are compounds having a very high molecular 

 complexity, so that these spontaneous divisions and changes in 

 form can only be ascribed to internal molecular movements of a 

 much simpler kind, doubtless, but in some measure akin to those 

 occurring in living matter when fission occurs or amoeboid move- 

 ments are being produced. 



' " On the Artificial Formation of so-called Cells," 1867. 

 = " Mem. de I'Acad. de Medicine," 1859, p. 248 ; quoted also in his " Traite du 

 Microscope," 1871, p. 562, 



