Vol. VII. June, 1904. No. i 



BIOLOGICAL BULLETIN 







ARTHUR W. GREELEY. 



.Arthur W. Greeley died at St. Louis, after an operation for 

 appendicitis, on March 15, 1904, at the age of twenty-eight. 

 The following paper, which he had prepared for publication just 

 before his death, will indicate how lamentable for American sci- 

 ence is the loss of this enthusiastic, industrious and keen investi- 

 gator. 



In this suggestive paper, explaining on the basis of modern 

 physical chemistry the changes in structure of protoplasm ac- 

 companying changes in function, Greeley has mapped out for 

 others work which he had planned for himself, but which he was 

 unable to accomplish. There has been hitherto no thorough 

 study of the changes in structure of living protoplasm produced 

 by salts from the standpoint of modern views of electrolytes and 

 colloidal solutions. This paper is a most important contribution 

 to this subject and opens up a great field for further work. It was 

 Greeley's good fortune to be able to reduce the changes to order, 

 and thus to supply the structural basis for observed changes in 

 function produced by salts and other agencies. As a result of 

 this work he was able to reduce many of the so-called " tropic " 

 responses of organisms to a common basis ; all agencies produc- 

 ing a certain change in the protoplasm producing also a definite 

 response in orientation of the organism. What a great step in 

 advance this is will be appreciated by those familiar with the con- 

 fusion prevailing in this most difficult field. 



This paper, in connection with his earlier discoveries of the 

 production of spores in infusoria by cold ; on the identity of the 

 physiological action of dehydration and exposure to low tem- 

 peratures, and of the production of artificial parthenogenesis in 

 the echinoderm egg by cold, stamps Greeley as an original, 



