Page:Life and death (1911).djvu/292

 at once. They are produced rapidly for one part, and more slowly for a small remaining portion. Bars of ferro-nickel which have been kept at the same temperature change gradually in length in the course of a year. Can we find a better proof of internal activity occurring in a substance differing so greatly from living matter?

Nature of the Activity of Particles.—These are examples of the internal activity that occurs in brute bodies. Besides, these facts that we are quoting merely to refute Bichat's assertion relative to the immutability of brute bodies, and to show us their activity, also afford us another proof. They show that this activity, like that of animals, wards off foreign intervention, and that this parrying of the attack, again like that of animals, is adapted for the defence and preservation of the brute mass. So that if we consider of special importance the adaptative, teleological characteristic of vital phenomena, a characteristic which is so easily made too much of in biological interpretations, we may also find it again in the inanimate world. To this end we may add to the preceding examples one more which is no less remarkable. This is the famous case of Becquerel's process for colour-photography.

Colour-Photography.—A greyish plate, treated with chloride or iodide of silver and exposed to a red light, rapidly becomes red. It is then exposed to green light, and after passing through dull and obscure tints it becomes green. To explain this remarkable phenomenon, we cannot improve on the following statement:—The silver salt protects itself against the light that threatens its existence; that light causes it to pass through all kinds of stages of