490 
BULLETIN OK THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
sion when Faraday had been discoursing on some of the magnificent 
pre-arrangements of Divine Providence so lavishly scattered in nature, 
I have seen him struggle to repress the emotion which was visibly 
striving for utterance ; and then, at the last, with one single, far- 
reaching word he would just hint at his meaning, rather than express 
it. On such occasions, he only who had ears to hear could hear.” 
And I remember to have read in some report of his lectures that he 
declared that more than once, while in the midst of some important 
experiment, he seemed to be on the verge of some great discovery 
which, almost at the moment of success, eludes his grasp. I refer to 
this, because as naturalists, we cannot fail to have observed an inter- 
esting statement lately put forward in the public press concerning the 
investigations of a man of science in a western city. Prof. LoeV), a 
man of considerable eminence in the University of Chicago, seems to 
say absolutely what Faraday, undoubtedly, came so near saying, that 
life is electricity, and electricity is life, and that in taking food into 
our system we are taking in vitality through the electricity which the 
food generates. In other words, electricity, instead of the dynamic, 
force from heat, is “ the basis for muscular health and activity.” 
In some of his declarations Prof. Loeb has affirmed that death was 
not a “ negative process, a simple breaking down of tissues, as it has 
been regarded up to this time, but an active agent born with the birth 
of the egg and destined, if not checked, to gain the upper hand of the 
life instinct and bring about extinction. But, greater even than the 
apparent discovery of this death agent in all substance, is Prof. I^eb’s 
announcement that he has been able to check it in the eggs of the sea 
urchin at least, by means of chemical agents. This, it is cjaimed, 
means nothing less than that on a minute scale the secret of eternal 
life is in the power of mankind. The experiments. Prof. Loeb said, 
were simple. Unfertilized eggs of the sea urchin were placed in a 
weak solution of potassium cyanide and abandoned for several days. 
In ordinary conditions an unfertilized egg dies in a few hours, destro^^ed 
by the death agents born with it. At the end of several days the eggs 
were again examined and were found to be still capable of fertilization 
and of producing healthy animals.” “I have no doubt whatever,” said 
one of the greatest physicists of the United States in speaking of the 
subject, “ that in Dr. Loeb’s laboratory at Chicago or at the one in 
Wood’s Hall, Massachusetts, life will be created, and that before long.” 
