218 Transactions of the Sociefij. 



liarities of form and structure determined by the matter of a sperma- 

 tozoon. What do they discover concerning this matter ? It seems 

 to be a minute speck of commonplace " albuminoid " material, not 

 very different from that out of which ordinary epithelial cells are 

 formed. — But only think of its power ! 



Chemical Composition and Analysis of Living Matter. 



The phenomena which characterize life have been referred by 

 many to the mere chemical properties of the substance or substances 

 of which the living matter is composed, or to the properties of the 

 original atoms of which the matter consists. In many addresses 

 and memoirs on this question, we meet with statements concerning 

 the chemical composition of protoplasm which are most misleading. 

 Dr. Allman adds the weight of his authority to the assertion, that you 

 can analyze protoplasm. But is it not obvious that, if by protoplasm 

 " living matter " is meant, and the context shows that this is really 

 so, you cannot do anything of the kind ? The only matter that can 

 be analyzed is that which is found after the death of living matter 

 — not the actual living matter itself. Is it not misleading people 

 if you tell them you are really showing them what living matter is 

 made of when you are only able to show them some of the charac- 

 ters and properties of the substances which remain after the matter 

 has ceased to live ? Of course dead matter can be broken up into 

 its elements, and these may be arranged and re-arranged in a 

 thousand ways without our learning how they were arranged when 

 the matter was alive. While, on the other hand, we are able to 

 prove most conclusively that the substances discovered after death 

 certainly did not exist as such while the matter Hved. The things 

 we handle and name only came into being when life ceased. The 

 elements of which they are compounded of course were there, but 

 that is all. What we desire to learn is how they were related to 

 one another, how they were arranged during the living state, and 

 this remains absolutely unknown. 



How can any properties of matter that can be even thought of, 

 or any structural molecular arrangement, pull apart and re-arrange 

 atoms of Oxygen, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Carbon, and at varying 

 degrees of temperature in different cases? By what process of 

 analysis or synthesis of which we can form any conception can 

 these changes, which we know do occur in the case of one living 

 thing at a temperature of 100^ F., of another at 50°, of another at 

 32°, be accounted for ? Nay, there are instances in which complex 

 chemical compounds, as well as highly complex structures, are 

 formed in living beings at temperatures below, and indeed con- 

 siderably below, the point at which water becomes solid. 



Will any material properties of " undifferentiated protoplasm " 

 account for similar chemical changes at different temperatures, or 



