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THURSDAY, MAY 3, 1906.

RADIOBES AND BIOGEN.

The Origin of Life: Its Physical Basis and Definition. By John Butler Burke. Pp. xiv +350; with illustrations. (London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1906.) Price 16s. net.

MR. J. R. BURKE describes, under the name of

"radiobes," " minute bodies which appeared in sterilised bouillon when small quantities of radium chloride or bromide were brought into contact therewith.

"A minute quantity of the salt contained in a small glass tube, one end of which was drawn out to a fine point, was introduced into an ordinary test-tube containing bouillon. The test-tube was plugged with cotton-wool in the usual way with such experiments, and then sterilised at a temperature of 130° C. for about thirty minutes at a time. On cooling, as soon as the liquid had coagulated, the fine end of the inner tube containing the radium was broken by means of a wire hook in a side tube. The salt was thus allowed to drop on the surface of the gelatin. After twentyfour hours signs of growth were already visible."

The radiobes had appeared! They were at first like diplococci, and varied considerably in size from mere specks as seen with a 2-inch lens. There is a lack of precise measurements.

"The growth is from the minutest visible specks, which develop into two dots, then into a dumb-bell shaped appearance, later a biscuit-shape, and later still more like frog's spawn, through various stages, as in the figures, until a shape is reached different from its previous forms, when it divides and loses its individuality, and ultimately becomes resolved into minute crystals."

Some of them show a nucleated structure, which may exhibit subdivision "as in karyokinesis "; they are stainable; they are credited with "assimilation "; there is a "stoppage of growth at a certain stage of development "; there is a peculiar segmentation, like that in yeast-cells, said to be quite different from any

cleavage due to surface tension; and, finally, there is a disintegration. The author speaks of them as intermediate between crystals and bacteria, and as possessing n-1 of the n properties of living bacilli.

The author is somewhat vacillating in his description of his " radiobes," but he does not regard them as living things in the ordinary sense. They "obviously lie altogether outside the beaten track of living things" (p. 109), but they may bridge over the apparently insuperable gap between the organic and inorganic world (p. 110).

"Forms we have obtained are analogous to living types and may be called artificial forms of life, but they are not the same as life as we know it to-day: they may help, however, to fill in some of the gaps between living and dead matter " (p. 187).

"These bodies are neither crystalline nor colloid in disguise, though colloids, as aggregates, but something more: and crystals in their constituent parts. The point which distinguishes them from both of these is perhaps the fundamental principle which marks them out at once as possessing the elements of vitality in a primitive and most undeveloped state (p. 112).

The author started with proteid material, which we know to be an essential constituent of organisms, which has not as yet been artificially synthesised, and he brought into contact with this a stimulus provocative of molecular change, namely, a radium salt; he thus obtained radiobes, and the interesting point is whether these do in any way approximate in their behaviour to simple organisms. As we have not studied radiobes we can only judge from the evidence the author adduces, and it seems to us entirely inconclusive. We find no convincing evidence of assimilation, cyclic development, or reproduction in the ordinary sense of these terms; and we do not think the author succeeds in showing that radiobes are essentially different from the minute aggregates or mimic cells produced by many other experimenters. We cannot bring ourselves to believe that little bodies which are soluble in water will throw light on the nature or origin of living organisms. The evidence of anything approaching the behaviour of an organism

"The structure and composition of such artificial cells is sufficient to enable them to perform the functions of organic life, as distinct from such simpler forms of vitality which we at first supposed inorganic matter to possess. Thus they can assimilate, grow, pass into higher types, subdivide, multiply, and finally, having gone through the whole cyclic process, disintegrate and lose their structure in the course of time, being sensitive all the while to external stimulation, both electrical and chemical, in various degrees" (p. 133).

The explanation of the author's apparent oscillation between scientific caution and imaginative hope is to be found in the fact that he has re-defined the ordinary biological terms. Life, for instance, is

"the specialised mode of motion of a complex system of molecules in a dynamically unstable state, so that there is a continuous or continual change, or flux of its substance, between the individual aggregates of molecules and their surroundings" (p. 49).

certain amount of energy stored up which would entitle it to be regarded as possessing a certain amount of potential life (p. 186).

He postulates original units of life, bio-elements. biogens, or ultimate nuclei, possibly consisting of cyanogen (as suggested by Pflüger's well-known hypothesis), more probably of something with a larger store of energy-" an element possessing many of the chemical properties of carbon and the radio-active properties of the more unstable elements."

"Life-activity is a phenomenon of matter as much as radio-activity, although really of a more complex kind, and the manner in which the energy is stored up in the ultimate nucleus is probably pretty much the chemical elements themselves, throughout the universe Such nuclei may have existed, like the for an almost indefinite time. To account for their formation would be the same as to account for the formation of the elements" (p. 166).

same.

They may have existed in the nebula which formed the earth or they may have been borne to the earth by meteors, as has been previously suggested.

"The formation of cellular life as we see it to-day was the result of the subsequent interaction of this

There is metabolism in the phenomena of flames, fluorescence, and phosphorescence-" a physical process which is not merely analogous to, but essentially of the same kind as, even if incomparably simpler than, organic metabolism" (p. 179). It is this reediting of the biological dictionary that enables the author to write regarding his radiobes :

"We can say perhaps that we are witnesses at last to the first beginnings of life in its higher sense; but though apparently a case of abiogenesis, to our mind it seems to be a case of biogenesis, from the view of matter which we take, of biogenesis indeed carried to its logical extreme."

We sympathise with the author's vigorous protest against the libel implied in the phrase "dead matter," but we do not think the apartness of vital sequences is diminished by giving a more elastic definition to "life" and "metabolism." As to the bearing of radiobes on the problem of the origin of living creatures upon the earth, we do not think that it amounts to much, not only because Mr. Burke started with proteid material (the natural synthesis of which it is at least difficult to imagine), but also because it seems to us too short and easy a disposal of problems simply to suppose that the coordination and regulation of organic metabolism, the power of effective response, and other insignia of living creatures are secondary acquisitions gradually wrought out in the course of selection. Our business is to try to make the hypothesis of primitive abiogenesis more plausible, and we can only do this by condescending to discuss the detailed difficulties in a concrete fashion.

Mr. Burke's method is different; he elaborates a new theory of vitality which seems to us quite in the air.

of course there was an elimination of failures when nature was trying her prentice hand at organismmaking. One of these failures Mr. Burke may have been on the track of when he made his radiobes. In ordinary cell-life the bio-element persists as the vital spark, the nucleus within the nucleus, the nth or ultimate nucleus, the real source of vital energy. It is also the hereditary substance, and it "may be all of us that survives when we have shuffled off this mortal coil."

The author tells us much more about biogens than about radiobes, soaring in a region where verification and contradiction are alike impossible. He supports his theory by arguments from analogy, mainly drawn from his studies on the "physical metabolism" seen in the phenomena of fluorescence and phosphorescence, and he shows that the theory is the natural outcome of his discovery of radiobes, to which the bouillon supplies the soil or constituents, but the radium the seed or vital spark. It is difficult for a biologist to follow the details of this physicist's theory of vitality, e.g. when we read of two kinds of biogens --the characterless nebulous biogen " which corresponds to an ovum, and the concentrated biogen which a spermatozoon. But Mr. Burke's corresponds to general view may be indicated by quoting a few more

66

sentences.

"Life is as much a phenomenon of matter as electricity is. More clearly, life and matter are merely merely the fossilised state of biogen, and life of the matter being different phenomena of electricity, phenomena which take place in biogen in that stage through which electronic aggregations have to pass before they are converted into the crystalline forms of electrons which we call the chemical atoms of matter" (p. 192).

If this is what the author calls "more clearly," his standard of lucidity must be very divergent from that of the mean of the biological race. Biogen is

of our ovens and kilns is singularly incomplete, and the statement is made that, owing to the nature of the English earthenware bodies, the firing of onglaze decorations in the continuous kiln has been a failure, when, as a matter of fact, many of these kilns are in successful operation. The treatment accorded to our English bone-china is just as incomplete.

The accounts of French and German processes are naturally much better, not only because the author is better acquainted with them, but no doubt because so much more has already been published about them. The author had the excellent idea of adding to his volume a vocabulary of technical terms in German, English, and French, and tables showing the relative importance of the industry in various countries. Unfortunately, the idea has been very imperfectly executed. In the vocabulary many of the English terms are such as no potter would use, while some few of them are nonsense; and the figures given as to the extent of the industry in various countries are so incomplete and incomparable as to be positively misleading. On the whole, however, the book must be described as excellent for its purpose; and the English potter might well wish that he had such a book to put into the hands of the young men who are likely to occupy responsible positions on his works.

WILLIAM BURTON.

THE SOIL AND ITS TILLAGE.

Agriculture Générale. Le Sol et les Labours.
Paul Diffloth. Pp. xii +490.
Baillière et Fils, 1906.) Price 5 francs.

(Paris: J.

By

B.

THIS is the first book of a new French agricultural encyclopædia, which is being published in forty volumes, under the direction of M. G. Wéry, assistant director of the Institut National Agronomique. It is written by Prof. Paul Diffloth. The aim of the encyclopædia is expressed in an introduction by Dr. Paul Regnard, successor to the late M. Eugène Risler as director of the institute. It is to extract from the present teaching of agricultural science all that is available for immediate application by the practical farmer, making him acquainted at the same time with the scientific facts upon which actual practice is based.

Dr. Regnard pays a compliment to English agriculturists by stating that they have never accepted the notion which he attributes to his own countrymen that agricultural science is antagonistic to practical experience. We fear the compliment is not altogether deserved, and that French and English farmers have much in common in this respect; yet the remarkable progress in the direction of higher agricultural educa tion during the past ten years in this country may be regarded as both cause and effect of the gradual disappearance of the idea that the practice of agri. culture can derive no advantage from the labours and teachings of science.

With the love of logical analysis which characterises French scientific literature, M. Diffloth's work is divided and subdivided almost ad infinitum. An idea

of its completeness may be gathered from a summary of these divisions. The book comprises two main branches, viz. "Agrologie" and The Preparation of the Soil," the former being defined as the study of land in relation to agriculture and of the relationship which subsists between the nature of a soil and its produce. The first branch treats of the soil, the subsoil, their physical and chemical properties; water in relation to fertility, its distribution, rainfall, permeability, impermeability, water levels, wells, watercourses, &c.; the analysis of soils by processes physical, mechanical, geological, chemical, &c.; the relations of the soil with the plant, comprising the subjects of nitrification, denitrification, humus, fertility, and the nature of the soil suited to different plants. The second branch of the book, paration of the Soil," treats of cultivation, the clearing of land, peaty and brackish soils, and the improvement of soils by warping, tree planting, levelling. removal of rocks, stones; tillage operations, including digging, drainage, and the various systems of ploughing; semi-tillage, so called, consisting of scarifying, cultivating (in its technical sense), extirpation of weeds, &c.; harrowing, rolling; and, lastly, of manures and artificial fertilisers.

66 The Pre

We do not remember ever before to have read any

precise definition of what agriculture is. The author defines it as the art of obtaining from the soil the maximum of substances useful to man at the minimum cost. We do not quarrel with such a definition, though it represents the ideal rather than the actual.

Full justice is done to the part played by the soil in the sustenance of plants, and in particular to the nitrogen problem, which has been the subject of so much scientific investigation and discussion during the past twenty years. The author indicates briefly the discoveries made by de Saussure, Dumas, Boussingault, and others as to the action of carbonic acid of the air and of nitrogen in the soil in the nourishment of plants; the work of mineral salts as demonstrated by Berthier, Sprengel, and Liebig; the experiments of Schlosing and Müntz showing the action of ferments in transforming organic nitrogen into nitric acid and of micro-organisms in nitrification; and, lastly, the experiments of Hellriegel and Wilfarth revealing the existence of bacteria in the nodules found on the roots of leguminous plants and the absorption by their agency of nitrogen from the free and unlimited supplies present in the air.

M. Diffloth refers to the great developments in France and other Continental countries of the principle

of agricultural cooperation. Its successful application to Ireland is well known, and in Great Britain, too, it is now making some headway. The future of agriculture, writes the author, may be summed up in two words as living symbols of its progress and prosperity, "Science et Association." We agree that if "Practice with Science " have been the agricultural watchwords of the nineteenth century signs are not wanting that "Science with Cooperation" may be those of the twentieth.

The practical operations of French husbandry are carefully described, with their scientific significance;