1883.] Proceedings of Scientific Societies. 233 
CuicaGco BIOLOGICAL Society, Oct. 2, 1882—Dr. H. Valin read 
a paper on experiments in artificial production of organic forms.’ 
In January of the present year the French chemists, D. Monnier 
and C. Vogt, presented, through M. Robin, to the French Acad- 
emy of Sciences, the results of some experiments showing 
that the forms peculiar to plants and animals also appear under 
certain circumstances in purely inorganic things (Comptes Rendus, 
Jan. 2, 1882). This is their language: “ Objects endowed with 
well-defined shapes, exhibiting all the characteristics of the forms 
met in organic bodies, such as simple cells, cells with porous 
tubes attached, tubes with walls or with partitions, filled with 
hetereogeneous and granular contents, etc., can be artificially pro- 
duced in an appropriate liquid by the reactions of two salts, form- 
ing, by double decomposition, either two, or one insoluble salt. 
One of the salts must be dissolved in the liquid, while the other 
must be solid inform. * * * * The forms met in organic 
bodies (cells and tubes) being produced just as well in a liquid 
with an organic or semi-organic (sucrate of calcium) origin as in 
a liquid of a purely inorganic origin (silicate of sodium), there 
cannot be henceforth any characteristic forms by which to distin- 
guish inorganic bodies on the one hand, from organic bodies on 
the other. * * * It is likely that the inorganic substances 
met in organic protoplasm have some function in determining the 
forms which living organisms assume.” 
Dr. Valin had repeated these experiments a number of times in 
the last six months, and made the following observations: In a 
flask full of soluble glass, were placed fragments of sulphate of iron, 
ten grains in weight, which immediately began to assume a col- 
loid condition on the outside, and shot tubular prolongations, col- 
loidal and cellular, which grew at the rate of half an inch in twenty- 
four hours. Some attained to two inches in length, and were 
about } of an inch in diameter. All these prolongations. shot a 
number of slender filaments from various points of their surface, 
and these attained a length of a few inches in a few hours. After 
a few days or weeks all these organisms assume a crystalline con- 
dition and become empty inside. Some of them rise to the sur- 
face of the liquid. They are insoluble in water, they remain in- 
tact when exposed to air, and when introduced in a newly pre- 
pared flask at the same time with fresh fragments, they hasten the 
metamorphosis of these. The addition of water to the soluble 
glass renders the experiments more easy and saves time. 
. Watched under the microscope, the fragments of sulphate of 
iron are seen to swell all around. An unctuous, colloid mass is 
~med, which consists of fine granules perfectly similar to animal 
tissues is mass stretches into prolongations, and fluid con- 
= tnts are seen to flow inside these. When the surface of some 
Prolongations was opened into, a semi-solid substance grew out 
ete i 
- “See AMERICAN NATURALIST, 1882, p. 509, “ On the Nature of Life.” 
