THE ORIGIN OF LIFE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 94, 6 September 1912, Page 5

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE.

AN INTERESTING ADDRESS,, By Cable—?i'e«*' Association—Copyright. Received s', 10.35 p.m. !. Loridon, September ;5. At the British Association meeting at Pumice, Professor Schaefer, -of ljdinburgh, in his presidential address, dealing with the origin of life, said that, setting side as devoid of scientific foundation, supernatural intervention in , the first production of life, we are compelled to believe thai it owed its origin to evolution. Life was purely a matter of chemical interaction. Chemists sooner or later would be able to produce a living substance similar to that wherefrom nil existing vital organisms were evolved. Recent research suggested the probability of a dividing line between living and non-living matter, less sharp than it had hitherto been supposed to be. He suggested need for careful search for the missing link between the living and dead matter. The solution was hopeless if it was true that life was only evolved onee. On the subject of death, he disagreed with MetchnikofT, who held, that old-age death was a natural and necessary sequence, even if disease were altogether eliminated. Certain fixed cells of the lwdy must grow old and become fiinctionless. ' Professor Halliburton said that the'address was historic. It might arouse a controversy similar to Tyndall's and ' Huxley's celebrated addresses. Mr. Caird, a Dundee jute manufacturer, has presented the Association with £IO,OOO. The Times says that Professor Schaefer, in declaring the problems of life are essentially problems of matter, guards himself against crude and obsolete materialism by carefullj' distinguishing between life and the soul. ,