247 
The Ionic Phase of the Sea. 
non-material action only increases the complexity of material 
organization on lines previously existing, the still more fundamental 
physical factors may be recognisably brought within the same 
sequence of phenomena; and beyond the introduction of solar energy, 
itself a component factor of the solar system, it is not possible to 
draw any sharp line between “living” and “ non-living ” reactions 
in the sea. To this extent the ionic organization of the sea may 
be said to constitute the link between the “ life ” of aqueous 
protoplasmic organism, included within the province of the 
biologist, and the more generalized life of the stellar universe: the 
wider view of life being thus brought within the provisional 
definition as organization pressing to the mathematical limit of 
possibility , as determined by the progressive cooling of the solar 
system, of which the earth and its ocean form but a special case. 
The expression “ organization ” being again a term masking some 
unknown factor, yet suggesting that the biological segregation of 
spheroidal plasmatic entities in ionic sea-water may be in some way 
a parallelism of the causation of the more immense phenomena 
associated with the segregation of spheroidal suns in a period of 
material organization indefinitely more remote. On the other hand 
if there be still an inherent distaste for extending the connotation 
of the term “ life ” in the biological sense to such a medium, it may 
be at any rate accepted that these fundamental physical properties 
of ionized sea-water constitute also the most fundamental asset of 
organic matter, requiring only the addition of the phenomena of 
“ chemical growth ” to bring it even more clearly within the com¬ 
prehension of this jealously guarded term. But that plasmatic 
life arose in the sea with its complex ionic phase, and that such life 
out of the available elements of sea-water, has followed the 
carbon-atom, so far fairly expresses the facts of the case; both the 
locus and the material for the evolution of plasmatic life being 
clearly defined. 
GENERAL LITERATURE. 
Anglestein (1911), Cohn’s Beitrage, p. 87. 
Allen (1919), Journal Marine Biolog. Assoc. 
Church (1919), Plankton Phase and Plankton Rate, Journal of Bot., Supp. Ill. 
,, ,, The Building of an Autotrophic Flagellate : Bot. Mem. 1, Oxford. 
Gaarder (1917), Bergen Aarbok, p. 32. Die Hydroxylzahl des Meerwassers. 
Kriimmel (1907), Ozeanographie, Vol. I, p. 242. 
Lohmann (1908), VViss. Meeres. Kiel, X, p. 351. 
Murray and Hjort (1912), Depths of the Ocean, p. 175. 
Palitzsch (1912), Danish Oceanograph. Exped., “Thor,” p. 240, p. 251, 
Measurement of the Hydrogen Ion Concentration. 
Ruppin (1910), Wiss. Meeres. Kiel, Alkalinity of Sea Water, p. 290. 
