THE ORIGIN OF BACTERIA AND OTHER MICRO-ORGANISMS 29 



It is no pathological stretch of the imagination to suppose that the 

 macrocosm (as represented by a stellar system) is mirrored in the micro- 

 cosm (as represented by the atom and the molecule). There can 

 be little doubt that old stellar systems disintegrate and new ones form. 

 Nebulae, comets and stellar dust are not newly created substances as is 

 generally taught, but rather newly reformed or rearranged substances, re- 

 sulting from explosively disintegrated stellar systems, in similitude to dis- 

 integrating atoms (radium, thorium, polonium, lead, etc.). 



Bacteriology is the newest of the sciences, dating back to about 1875. 

 And since then this science has made a series of explosive advances. It is 

 generally taught that bacteria are plants and it has been customary to class 

 them with the fungi, and some scientists have even suggested that they are 

 somatically reduced or degenerate algae. There is, however, no good 

 reason for assuming that they are degenerate algae nor are we justified in 

 designating them as plants. We are justified in stating that the various 

 groups of bacteria are phylogenetically related and that they, in all proba- 

 bility, had a polyphyletic origin in many different areas of the earth's 

 surface, or mayhap upon other planets as has been explained above. 

 We are at the present time not in a position to state definitely whether or 

 not any of the higher fungi are phylogenetically derived from any of the 

 groups of bacteria. The Leptothrix and Streptothrix groups are perhaps 

 of bacterial origin. We are amply justified in saying that bacteria were 

 among the first, if not the first, living things which made their appearance 

 upon an originally lifeless earth. We know that the large group of nitri- 

 fying bacteria will grow in a medium composed of water to which is added 

 0.1 per cent, each of ammonium sulphate, potassium phosphate and 

 magnesium carbonate, a medium wholly free from sugar and nitrogenous 

 compounds containing only such ingredients as existed on our plant prior 

 to the development of living things. Out of these substances the nitrifiers 

 formed (in the presence of air) ammonia, sugar, fatty acids and proteins, 

 which substances in turn serve as media for the development of other 

 bacteria and of higher organisms. This statement will serve to indicate 

 the potentialities of this group of bacteria in the way of assimilating dead 

 inorganic matter and converting it into or utilizing it as a Ufe-sustaining 

 pabulum. We are, however, still confronted with the problem of the 

 source of the hf e, the life principle or whatever it may be styled, which made 

 it possible for bits of organic matter to utihze these dead inorganic materials 

 for the purpose of maintaining life and as the building material of a 

 living substance, for life activities imply the existence of a living organic 

 substance. 



It may be recalled that some years ago Huxley thought he had dis- 

 covered .the primal living substance in the slime taken from the ocean's bed 



