THE ORIGIN OF LIFE.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume II, Issue 234, 6 September 1912, Page 5

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE.

PROFESSOR SCHAEFER'S THEORY. [PRESS ASSOCIATION COPYRIGHT.] London, Sept. 5. At the British Association meeting at Dundee, Professor Schaefer, of Edinburgh, in his presidential address dealing with the origin of life, said that setting aside as devoid of scientific foundation supernatural intervention in the first production of life they were compelled to believe that it owed its origin to evolution. Life was purely a matter of chemical interaction and chemists would sooner or later be able to produce living substance similar to that from which all existing vital organisms were evolved. Recent research suggested the probability that the dividing line between living and non-liv-ing matter was less sharp than hitherto supposed. He suggested the need of careful search for the missing link between living and dead matter. The solution was hopeless if it was true that life was only evolved once, but he suggested that it was happening still. On the subject of death lie disagreed with Professor Metchnikoff and held that old age and death were the natural and necessary sequence of life even if disease was altogether eliminated. It was certain that the fixed cells of the body must grow old and become functionless.

Professor Halliburton said that the address would be historic and might aiouse a controversy similar to those caused by Tyndall’s and Huxley's celebrated addresses. -Mr. Caird, of Dundee, jute manufacturer, presented the British Association with £IU,OOO. The ‘ Times” says that Professor Schaefer, in declaring that the problems of life, were essentially problems of matter. guarded himself against a crude and obsolete materialism by carefully distinguishing between life and the soul.

[Startling as Professor Schaefer’s theory may appear, his speculation is by no means a new one. In the report of the investigations of the German scientist: Biitschli. translated into English in 1894, it is shown how a model of protoplasm can be manufactured. Very finely triturated, soluble particles are rubbed into a smooth paste, with an oil of the requisite consistency. A fragment of such paste brought into a liquid in which the solid parts are soluble, slowly expands into a honeycomb like foam, and is a marvellous imitation of protoplasm. The nicely balanced conditions of solution produce a slate of unstable equilibrium, and changes of shape and position in the mode! simulate closely the corresponding manifestations in real protoplasm. The model has no power of recuperation, and in a short time equilibrium is restored, and the resemblance disappears. But it suggests a method by which, when the chemistry of protoplasm and proteid is better known, the proper substances which compose protoplasm may be brought together. The origin of life, however, is veiled in a mist which present biological knowledge is unable to dispel, and speculations in regard to the earliest forms of life are at present premature and futile.]