ow be made artificially, and others of the same
general plan which she seems not to have as yet devised can be
produced within the laboratory.

Attempts have been made to manufacture proteids, but these have as yet
eluded the efforts of the chemist. He is beginning, however, to come
nearer understanding their composition, and when he once clearly
comprehends that he may be able to reproduce them.

One of the German chemists is convinced that the nuclein in the
nucleus of the cell is not a very complicated compound. Under such
conditions it is not a matter of surprise that the physiological
chemist should be constantly dreaming that he may at some time produce
living matter in the laboratory. To the ordinary mind it scarcely
seems possible. We are so entirely sure that life is not amenable to
physics or chemistry that we can hardly conceive of the possibility of
its originating out of matter in the test tube. If it does so come,
and when it does so come, this will not prove that life is a less
noble and less wonderful thing than we thought. It will only prove
that chemistry and physics are more noble and more wonderful than we
dreamed.

There is another way of approaching this life problem, though it seems
to be rather a begging of the question than a solution of it. Of
recent years it has been discovered that even the very low
temperatures obtained by evaporating liquid air, say three hundred
degrees below zero, Fahrenheit, do not kill seeds or spores of mold.
The space between the planets is undoubtedly extremely cold. We have
always supposed it to be entirely too cold for life to exist in it.
But we laid little stress on the fact because we had no thought of any
possible life existing there. But the discovery that seeds and spores
can live uninjured through extreme cold has led to an interesting
suggestion. This is that when the earth became adapted to the presence
of life it was infected by germs transported on meteors from some
other system. According to this theory, organic dust through space is
ready to infect any planet which offers the conditions under which
life may arise. Of course this theory does not explain the origin of
life. It pushes back that origin a little farther or supposes that
life is as old as matter itself. Again we may leave to the scientist
the discussion and the elaboration of this or any other theory he may
promulgate concerning the origin of life. When he has established
clearly the pro