530 ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1912. 



present known to us in the inorganic world." I do not understand, 

 however, why he goes on to sa}^, " and if, as we may confidentl}^ hope, 

 similar phenomena are ultimately found in what we at present call 

 the inorganic world, our present conception of that world as a mere 

 world of matter would be completely altered." Of course it would, 

 but the eventuality is one that I, as a chemist, can not contemplate 

 as possible; far from having confident hope, I believe such discovery 

 to be out of the question. 



Prof. Schafer says the contention is fallacious that growth and 

 reproduction are properties possessed only by living bodies and refers 

 to the growth of crystals; but in this and not a few other cases, as I 

 have said, he carries the argument from analogy too far. The growth 

 of crystals is a process of mere apposition of like simple units, which 

 become assembled, time after time, in similar fashion like so many 

 bricks; and there is no limit to crystal growth. Given proper con- 

 ditions, large crystals inevitably increase at the expense of the smaller 

 similar crystals present along with them in a solution; hence it is that 

 occasionally in nature, crystals are met with of huge size. The 

 multiplication of similar crystals is the consequence of the presence 

 of a multiplicity of nuclei in a solution; nothing corresponding to 

 cell division is ever observed in cases of inorganic growth. Organic 

 growth is clearly a process of extreme complexit}^, one that involves 

 the association by a variety of operations of a whole series of diverse 

 units. 



It is impossible to regard demonstrations such as Leduc has given 

 with silica and other simple colloids as in any way comparable with 

 the phenomena of organic growth. 



Moreover, Loeb's experiments are wrongly quoted by Schafer as 

 instances of sexual reproduction. Wliat Loeb has done has been to 

 show that the life cycle may be started afresh by the introduction of 

 an excitant into the ovum and has thereby shown that the process 

 of fertilization by the spermatozoon is one in which at least two 

 events arc scored, the one being the incorporation of male elements 

 with female elements, whereb}^ biparental inheritance is secured, the 

 other the introduction of an excitant (hormone) which conditions 

 the renewal of the vital cycle of the organism; but the development 

 is that of an incomplete being whose somatic cells lack half the normal 

 number of chromosomes. 



Three 3- cars ago, in my address to Section B of the British Associa- 

 tion at Winnipeg, I had the temerity to do what Sir William Tilden 

 says no chemist will be prepared to do, as witness the following 

 passage: 



The general similarity of structure throughout organized creation may well be 

 conditioned primarily by properties inherent in the raateriala of which ;>.ll living things 

 are composed — of carbon, of oxygen, of nitrogen, of hydrogen, of phosphorus, of sal- 



