Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/186

 i8o THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

mutual attraction may have been ancestral to the cell, the primordial unity and individuality of which we shall describe later.

Third: this leads to the hypothesiB that this grouping occurred in the gelatinous etate deecribed as "colloidal" by Graham." Since all living cells are colloidal it appears probable that this grouping ot the "life elements" took place in a state of colloidal suspension, for it is in this state that the life elements best display their incessant action, re- action and interaction. Bechhold** obsen'es that

Whatever the arrangement of matter in living organisms in other worlds tuaj be, it must be of colloidal nature. What other condition except the col- loidal could develop such changeable and plastic forms, and jet be able, if necos- ury, to preserve these forms unaltered T

Fourth : with this assemblage, mutual attraction, and colloidal con- dition, a fourth hypothesis is that there arose the rudiments of com- petition and selection. Was there any stage in this grouping, assem- hlage, and organization of life forms, however remote or rudimentary, when the law of natural selection did not operate between different unit aggregations of matter ? Probably not, because each of th e chemical life elements possesses its peculiar properties which in living compound best serve certain functions. This cooperation was also an application of energy new to the cosmos. In other word.s, every element, as shown

��i (RiOHi) Gaoups OF Sns Spots.

in Table 11.. "The Life Elements" (pp. 116-i;8), and in the descrip- tions below, has its single or multiple services to render to the organism.

Hydrogen, the life e'cment of least atomic weight, is always near the surface of tlic typical hot stars. Rutherford*' tells us that while the hydrogen atom is the Hglitcj^t known its negatively charged electrons

eiiUa, glue) to denote coagulating substancea like gelatine, a typical colloid, aa diBtinguished from crystalloids. Proteins belong to that class of colloids which, once coagulated, can not return to the liquid condition.
 * Over fifty years ago Thomas Graham introduced the term "colloid" (L.

St Bechhold, Heinrich, lfll2, p. 194.

8= Rutherford, Sir Ernest, 1915, p. 113.

�� �