182 AMPHISBAENA 



speak of nature, there should be a slight music of harps. Why do 

 you keep plucking the feathers out of the goose that lays golden 

 eggs for all of us? After all, you are one of the classics in this 

 field. 



o: 



Thank you, I should rather not be. In your definition, a classic 

 in science is a man who does not have to be quoted any longer. 

 For the pickpocket, the man with the widest pockets is a classic. 

 And it has been remarked that Banquo is seldom quoted in 

 Macbeth's papers. 



y: 



All right, then I shall call you a Cassandra in long pants. But my 

 story was not yet entirely finished. I had been talking about trans- 

 forming DNA; and if you had not broken in, I should have con- 

 tinued by mentioning other instances in which nucleic acids were 

 assigned direct roles in the determination of hereditary properties. 

 For instance, there are the bacteriophages attacking E. coli which 

 seem to do it by injecting their specific DNA into the bacterial 

 cell. This is enough to set off an entire chain of events terminating 

 in the production of many phage particles and the rupture of the 

 host cell. And then we have the plant viruses; they contain 

 specific types of RNA which are infective; that means, the 

 nucleic acid itself, when applied to the plant, can give rise to the 

 formation of innumerable complete virus particles. These are all 

 definite and specific molecules exerting definite and specific 

 biological effects; and here you have the quintessence of our new 

 science, molecular biology. But this is not all. 



o: 

 I am sure, it is not. Even to sell soap nowadays, you need an 

 a cappella choir. What baffles an old-fashioned chemist in all this 

 is what has become of the chemical concept of a molecule. I have 

 heard people of a still older generation claim that this concept 

 ends with the applicability of Avogadro's law. But never mind. 



