Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/176

 170 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

��THE OEIGIN AND EVOLUTION OP LIP] UPON THE EARTH"

Bt HBNBY rAIBIIELD OSBORN

COLUMBIA UNITBB8ITX ; AHBBICAN MUBIUIC OF MATUBAXi HIB^

Lbcturb I, Pabt II

Primobdial Environment — Energy Derived from the g AND Light — Life Elements in the Solar Spectb

IN the change from the lifeless to the living world the p\ the " life elements '^ become known as functions.

The earliest function of living matter appears to have beei and transform the electric energy of those chemical elem throughout we designate as the " life elements/* This f unct to have developed only in the presence of heat energy, dei from the earth or from the sun. This is the first example process of the utilization of energy wherever it may be foi later stage of evolution life captured the light energy ( through the agency of chlorophyll, the green coloring mattei

If the lifeless surface of the primordial earth was like moon — covered not only with igneous rocks but with pil< storing debris, as recently described by Russell'* — ^the reflec of the earth's surface represented a loss of 40 per cent, of the as compared with the present reflecting power of the earth wl in a loss of 47 per cent, of the sun's heat; while the sola: constant, as measured by Abbott, is 1.923.

The primal dependence of the electric energy of life on t heat energy of the earth or on solar heat is demonstrated I versal behavior of the most primitive organisms, because whe perature of protoplasm is lowered 0° C. the velocity of th reactions becomes so small that in most cases all manifestati are suspended, that is, life becomes latent. Some bacteria very near the freezing point of water (0** C.) and possibly bacteria-like organisms grew below that point. Even now tl "hay bacillus'' grows at 6° C.°* Rising temperatures in velocity of the biochemical reactions of protoplasm up to ai temperature, beyond which they are increasingly injurious j fatal to all organisms. In hot springs some of the Cyanophy green algae), primitive plants intermediate in evolution betwe<

«2 Fourth course of lectures on the William Ellery Hale Foui tional Academy of Sciences, delivered at the meeting of the aeaden ingrton, on April 17 and 19, 1916.

«8 Bussell, H. N., 1916, p. 75.

B* Jordan, Edwin O., 1908, pp. 67, 68.

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