INTBOD UCTION 



The honest physicist must admit that he knows 

 no independent experimental evidence to suggest or 

 support the hypothesis of these assumed "Z" com- 

 binations of protons and electrons. He must also 

 admit that he really knows relatively very little 

 about atoms, protons and electrons, and nothing at 

 all about the explanation of life. Hence the author's 

 fundamental assumption must be admitted as pos- 

 sible. Further, she has shown how it can be used as 

 a working hypothesis in a variety of directions. 

 Finally, it should be susceptible of experimental 

 test. These considerations should support the au- 

 thor in her plea for serious consideration of her 

 work on its merits as a stimulus toward an experi- 

 mental test of her theory. 



The decisive test of this theory would involve the 

 proof or disproof of the existence in living matter 

 of combinations of protons and electrons in a dif- 

 ferent unit structure from the ordinary atoms of the 

 inorganic world. Failing this, there are certain 

 possibilities in the nature of indirect evidence, such 

 as the generation of life by some such combination 

 of circumstances as described by the author as a 

 "critical concentration of ions," or the energy trans- 

 formations which would be predicted by the theory 

 at the instant of death. 



In conclusion it is scarcely necessary to point out 



