180 SECRETS OF EARTH AND SEA 



it could not return. Curiously enough, Mr. Herbert 

 Spencer seems to have been (perhaps unconsciously) 

 affected by this traditional view, since he defined life as " the 

 continuous " — that is the important word — " adaptation 

 of internal to external relations." This definition pre- 

 judiced the view of some distinguished physiologists on 

 the question of " suspended animation," and I remember 

 a very warm dinner-table discussion with Michael Foster 

 and other friends, some twenty-five years ago, when I 

 put forward the view that so long as the intimate 

 structure — in fact, the chemical structure — of the proto- 

 plasm of a living thing is not destroyed, it does not 

 "die" though all chemical change in it may be arrested. 

 I compared the dried seed and dried animalcule — as I 

 would now compare the frozen seed and the frozen 

 bacteria — to a well wound watch which is stopped by 

 the intrusion of a needle between the spokes of its balance 

 wheel, or, better, by the cooling on the wheel of a tiny 

 drop of soft wax so as to clog it. The works of the 

 watch are rendered absolutely motionless, but it is not 

 " dead." As soon as the needle is removed or the tiny 

 speck of wax melted by a gentle warmth it resumes its 

 movement. It is, as we say, " alive again." So, too, 

 the frozen or dried organism is absolutely motionless. 

 No chemical movements can go on in it. They are 

 stopped by the solidity set up by freezing, or in the case 

 of simple " desiccation," by the absence of the moisture 

 necessary for bringing the chemical molecules into contact. 

 If protected from destructive agents, the mechanism 

 remains perfect for just so many years or centuries as 

 that protection lasts. Whenever the frozen organism 

 thaws or the dried organism becomes wet, the life- 

 processes are resumed, the seed germinates, the bacteria 

 grow and multiply. 



Thus we see what are some of the points of interest 



