MORE AbOUT CHEMICAL "CREATION."

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1390, 16 March 1912, Page 15

MORE AbOUT CHEMICAL "CREATION."

Professor liapliacl Dubois, whom the newspapers report to havo asserted that lip could "Pieate life" chemically, tlcnioß the impeachment. Like other experimenters, lie can form certain chetnial products that niinulato life, but he (lonics that he ever said, or ever led anyono to think, that lie. believed that they woro alive. What th-eso experiments do show is that we should be very careful, in studying the. lower forms of life, to assure, ourselves that we are not simply watching chemical transformations and movements. Professor Dubois is quoted by a writer in "Cosmos" (Paris) as admitting that he himself is not so sure Hint a hard-and-fast line enn be drawn between the two. After saying that he prefers to call the moving particles of his discovery "cobes," instead of "microbioids," into which latter word, he says, a false claim has been read by his critics, he remarks: — "I have never pretended, as has been asserted, that I have created life, because I do not know where it begins or where it ends, or even whether it begins or ends anywhere, as I do not believe it docs. In my opinion it'extends beyond the cell ami oven beyond the organised particles thnt make up t.lio cell." 'I'ho writer in "Cosmos" goes on to say: "lie citos, among other examples, luciferase, studied by him, which,- one© formed by the cell, has no further need of it in tho production of the physiologic light that was so long believed to result from a mysterious vital activity of the cell. The radiobes of Butler Burke of Cambridge are only microbioids of radium or of barium. From a single particle of barium chlorid deposited on the surface of an organic jelly (gelaiin or agiar-agar) soon separate an innumerable quantity of corpuscles wilh a whirling motion; it can furnish in a few minutes as many as 122,500 and one may count up to GSOO ner square millimeter. They may move five millimeters (one-fifth inch)' away from their point, of formation, cither on the surface or in depth. AI: first very small, these corpuscles grow until they reach, on an average, a diameter of 5 microniillimelrcs (thousandths of a mil-limeter)-.in forty minutes, after which (heir increase slops. These formations imitate certain living forms, but tho author repeats again that he has never pretended that they were alive." Mrs. Benham—"What are those food riots that 1 read about, • Henry " air. Benham—"We'll hnyc. one here" if jxjurs doesn't improve." Mr. and Mrs. Kobcrt Barber, who were both born in 1810 in tho parish of Lnkeuhcatli (Suffolk), died within ten utes of each oihr-r, and were buried on January 31 at Erisvrell (Suffolk). A case containing about 501b. of dynamite was found in the net of the Gr'imsby trawler Britain. It was dropped into the sea again.