The Development op the Plant 51 



the tiniest and lowliest specks of living matter that are 

 found in nature to-day, because otherwise there could 

 be no question of their evolution. And he further 

 assumes that they were formed by natural development 

 from some of the more complex chemical compounds in 

 the primitive ocean. On this third assumption it will 

 be advisable to dwell for a few pages. 



A few years ago a Cambridge physicist, Mr. J. Butler 

 Burke, was announced to have produced living things in 

 the laboratory out of non-living matter. The sensation 

 has died away, and his achievement is now usually dis- 

 missed with one of two contradictory charges. Some 

 say that his "radiobes" are not living things at all: 

 others say that he had not completely sterilised his 

 material, and wandering germs had developed in it. It 

 is clear that either one of these objections entirely 

 destroys the other, and the truth lies between the two. 

 In point of fact Mr. Burke never claimed to have pro- 

 duced living things,* and his results are very interesting. 

 He allowed a small tube of radium-salts to send its 

 emanation on some sterilised beef tea for a number of 

 hours in a closed tube, and at length tiny specks 

 appeared, which grew and sub-divided as microscopic 

 organisms do. No bacteriologist could recognise them 

 as living things, and as a matter of fact they died away 

 after a few generations. They were not living things at 

 all, but they showed that radium may quicken dead 

 matter, and cause its particles to link themselves to- 

 gether into little structures that for a time assimilate 

 matter and reproduce just as the lowest organisms do. 



The importance of the experiment is that it suggests 



* See his Origin of Life. Mr. Burke was writing at the 

 Same time that I was publishing a little brochure (now out of 

 print) on the subject, and neither knew of the other's title. 



