CAN SCIENCE TELL?

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 55, 14 September 1928, Page 9

CAN SCIENCE TELL?

FASCINATING THEORIES THE LONG-SOUGHT LINK Australian Press Association—United Service. LONDON, 12th September. A large audience at the British Association meeting at Glasgow was enthralled by Dr. F. G. Donnan, Professor of Inorganic and Physical Chemistry at University College, Loudon, when he suggested that the long-sought link between living aud non-living matter might have been discovered as a bacteriophage, a minute organism the nature of which was being "investigated. If life sprang from the non-living in the earliest forms of bacteria, it must have been of the minutest character, invisible through the finest microscopes, and passing easily through the pores of a porcelain filter. These must bo sought in filterable viruses. If we established a continuity of dimensions between the living and non-living, _it would be difficult to indicate the point at whieu it could be said: "Here is life, and there there is none." Dr. Donnan said that researches by Professor Hill, of London University, indicated that he was on the eve of an astounding discovery at the gate of life and death, and bringing near the day when scientists would be able to make a living cell. The Glasgow professor, Dr. Catheart, commenting, said: "You can go on for a thousand years improving the delicacy and 'exactness of the measurement of life's apparatus without coming nearer the solution of the central problem, namely, what is life?"