16 LIFE: ITS ORIGIN AND NATURE 
“In their power of finding energy or food in 
a lifeless world, the bacteria known as proto¬ 
trophic or ‘primitive feeders,’ are not only the 
simplest known organisms, but it is probable 
that that represent the survival of a primordial 
stage of life chemistry. These bacteria derive 
both their energy and their nutrition directly 
from inorganic chemical compounds: such 
types were thus capable of living and flourish¬ 
ing on the lifeless earth even before the advent 
of continuous sunshine, and long before the 
first chlorophyllic stage (algae) of the evolu¬ 
tion of plant life. Among such bacteria, possi¬ 
bly surviving from archseozoic time, is one of 
these ‘primitive feeders,’ namely, the nitroso 
monas of Europe. For combustion, it takes in 
oxygen directly through the intermediate action 
of iron, phosphorus, or manganese, each of the 
single cells being a powerful little chemical 
laboratory which contains oxidizing catalyz¬ 
ers, the activity of which is accelerated by the 
presence of iron and manganese. Still in the 
primordial stage, nitroso monas lives on ammo¬ 
nium sulphate, taking its energy (food) from 
the nitrogen of ammonium, and forming 
nitrites. Living symbiotically with it is nitro 
bacter, which takes its energy (food) from the 
nitrites formed by nitroso monas , oxidizing 
them into nitrates. Thus these two species il¬ 
lustrate in its simplest form our law of the 
interaction of an organism with its life en¬ 
vironment.” 
By way of analogy, it has of course been 
pointed out that plants derive their nutriment 
directly from inorganic substances, and con- 
