MODES OF ORIGIN COMPARED 61 



" It is true that there is no sort of parity between the properties 

 of the components and the properties of the resultant, but neither 

 was there in the case of water. It is also true that what I have 

 spoken of as the influence of pre-existing living matter is some- 

 thing quite unintelligible ; but does anybody quite comprehend 

 the modus operandi of an electric spark, which traverses a mixture 

 of oxygen and hydrogen ? " 



" What justification is there, then, for the assumption of the 

 existence in the living matter of a something which has no repre- 

 sentative or correlative in the not living matter which gave rise 

 to it ? " ' 



' After this chapter was written the results of some experiments by J. B. 

 Burke, in the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge, were published in ' Nature ' 

 (May 25, 1905), which attracted great attention, because they were supposed by 

 some to have demonstrated the de novo origin of living units of a peculiar kind 

 These the author proposed to term ' radiobes ' — partly because they had been 

 produced by the influence of radium on sterilised beef-gelatin, and partly because 

 of his extraordinary suggestion that they have " probably arisen in some way 

 from the invisible particles of radium." The very minute bodies produced are 

 admitted not to be Bacteria, and have been supposed to be some other still more 

 primitive form of life. That they have any claim to be living things seems, how- 

 ever, to be directly contra-indicated by the fact that they are soluble in water. 

 The author's original notion that they were living things, seems to have rested 

 almost solely upon the fact that the very minute particles not only grow, but, 

 " when they reach a certain size they sub-divide." As to this, one would like to 

 ask Mr. Burke whether he has actually watched the process of sub-division, or 

 whether he has assumed that it must occur because of appearances presented by 

 his particles. He has said nothing to indicate that he has even watched the 

 division. And that being so, let any one compare his figures with one of Rainey's 

 figures which I reproduced in " The Beginnings of Life," vol. ii. p. 62, when it 

 will be seen that the appearance of sub-division is just as exactly produced by 

 the juxtaposition of minute crystals of carbonate of lime. Altogether apart 

 from this, however, even if Burke had actually seen his particles divide, what 

 would that show in face of the observations long ago made by Robin as to the 

 spontaneous fissions exhibited by certain fatty extracts — an account of which 

 I have quoted on p. 42 ? In the course of my investigations I have frequently 

 encountered bodies as to whose nature it was difficult to decide (see "The 

 Beginnings of Life," vol. ii., Appendix A). Concretions intermediate between 

 crystals and organisms are, moreover, shown in that work in Fig. 43 ; while 

 in Fig. 39 we have a crude imitation of cellular structure by modified crystalline 

 aggregates — a subject which has recently been studied by Leduc in an article 

 entitled " La Cytogenese Experimentale " (" La Nature," March r, 1902). 



