OCCURRENCE OF ARCHEBIOSIS 141 



process that has been many times repeated. In regard to the 

 original process itself and our ignorance of the steps by which it 

 occurred Nageli says :— " The origin of the organic from the 

 morganic is, in the first place, not a question of experience and 

 experiment, but a fact deduced from the law of the constancy of 

 matter and force. If all things in the material world are causally 

 related, if all phenomena proceed on natural principles, organisms, 

 which are formed of and decay into the same matter, must have 

 been derived originally from inorganic compounds." 



What the actual steps of the process were in the past, or what 

 they are now, if living matter is still being formed from its elements, 

 is absolutely unknown. Pfliiger in 1875 put forward the notion 

 that cyanogen and its compounds may have been formed when the 

 earth was in a state of incandescence or great heat, and that changes 

 of this kind may have formed the starting point from which much 

 more complex molecules were ultimately produced. The cyanogen- 

 radicle is in fact believed by him to be always present in protoplasm 

 and to be one of the things which mainly helps to confer its cha- 

 racteristic properties upon protoplasm. Pfliiger, indeed, says that 

 cyanic acid might almost be described " as a semi-living molecule," 

 owing to its tendency to grow by concatenation of atoms. 



But there is another possibility — perhaps even simpler — that 

 must not be lost sight of. We have seen in Chapter III that living 

 matter grows freely, that it is capable of building up its own sub- 

 stance from a simple solution of ammonic tartrate in distilled water 

 and still more freely when a little phosphate of soda has been added 

 to the solution. Nitrate of ammonia, moreover, is known to be 

 produced, in the air during thunderstorms. It is formed, as Dumas 

 says, " upon a grand scale by the action of those magnificent 

 electric sparks which dart from the storm-cloud, and furrowing vast 

 fields of air, engender in their course the nitrate of ammonia which 

 analysis discovers in the thunder shower." And this nitrate of 

 ammonia, so formed, together with water, carbonic acid and a few 

 other simple saline ingredients are, as is well known, the materials 

 which plants of all kinds use for the building up of their own 

 substance. 



When we find, therefore, that Bacteria and Torulae can grow 

 freely in a simple solution of ammonic tartrate and sodic phosphate, 

 the view seems forced upon us that the synthesis of living matter 

 may be, in its lowest phasis, a much simpler process than has 

 hitherto been imagined. We find Bacteria, which have been pre- 



