Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/181

 ORIGIN OF LIFE UPON THE EARTH 175

in the stellar universe^ showing most prominently in the hotter stars^ and in the case of hydrogen being universal.

Action and Beaction as Adaptive Properties op the Life

Elements

Of the total of eighty-two or more chemical elements thus far dis- covered at least twenty-nine are known to occur in living organisms either invariably, frequently, or rarely, as shown in the accompanying Table II of the life Elements. The adaptation of the life elements is due to their incessant action and reaction, each element having its peculiar and distinctive forms of action and reaction, which in the organ- ism are transmuted into functions. Such activity of the life elements is largely connected with forms of electric energy which the physicists call ionization, while the correlated or coordinated interaction of various groups of life elements is largely connected with processes which the chemists term catalysis. Of catalysis we shall speak later.

Ionization, the actions and reactions of all the elements and electro- lytic compounds — according to the hypothesis of Arrhenius, j&rst put forth in 1887 — is primarily due to electrolytic dissociation whereby the molecules of all acids (6. g,, carbonic acid, HgCOs), bases (e. g,, sodium hydroxide, NaOH), and salts (e. g., sodium chloride, NaCl) give off streams of the electrically charged particles known as ions. Ionization is dependent on the law of Nemst that the greater the dielectric capacity of the solvent {e. g., water) the more rapid will be the dissociation of the substances dissolved in it, other conditions remaining the same. Thus ions are atoms or groups of atoms carrying electric charges which are positive when given off from metallic elements, and negative when given off from non-metallic elements. Electrolytic molecules, according to this theory, are constantly dissociating to form ions and the ions are as constantly recombining to form molecules. Since the salts of the various mineral elements are constantly being decomposed through elec- trolytic ionization, they play an important part in all the life phe- nomena; and since similar decomposition is induced by currents of elec- tricity, indications are that all the development of living energy is in a sense electric.

In Rutherford's experiments on radioactive matter''® he tells us that in the phosphorescence caused by the approach of an emanation of radium to zinc sulphate the atoms throw off the alpha particles to the number of five billion each second with velocities of 10,000 miles a second; that the alpha particles in their passage through air or other medium produce from the neutral molecules a large number of nega- tively charged ions, and that this ionization is readily measurable.

Phosphorescence in plants and animals is also regarded by Loeb^^ as

TO Batherf ord, Sir Ernest, 1915, p. 115. 71 Loeb, Jaeqaes, 1906, pp. 6&-68.

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