46 TKANSAGTIONS AND PROOKKDINGS OF THE [Skss. lxv. 



structure, development, and physiology; the bioinore; living 

 matter (bioplasma, biomonad, and cell) ; cell division and 

 its laws ; as well as analytical and complex problems of 

 cell division. 



The work from first to last is very carefully thought 

 out, keenly and logically argued, and the whole stated in 

 such a lucid style that, even in the most difficult parts of 

 a difficult subject, there is no ambiguity, and one follows 

 the author with ease, although his course is quite out of 

 the beaten track. It is a book that the biologist will read 

 with profound interest. 



" La nature," he says in his preface, " ne nous cache 

 rien. Elle nous presente, au contraire, tous les moyens 

 necessaires pour devoiler ses mysteres. C'est a nous de 

 savoir en profiter, en tachant de ne point mecounattre leur 

 valeur." From his standpoint, the phenomena of life are 

 regarded as the natural consequence of chemical, physical, 

 and mechanical phenomena. He deprecates the dragging 

 into hypotheses of special forces, and regards the known 

 chemical laws that govern dead matter as quite sufficient 

 to explain the fundamental manifestations of life. While 

 biologists generally have sought an explanation of vital 

 phenomena in the morphological structure of living sub- 

 stance, in this theory morphological structure is of only 

 secondary importance. 



In some slight points it resembles Altmann's granula 

 theory, but goes far beyond it and any of the other well 

 known recent theories. The theory of the cell as the vital 

 unit is gradually losing ground, and Altmann's theory, 

 which regards the cell granules (biomores of Giglio-Tos) as 

 the living units, has many objections. This theory goes 

 beyond Altmann's, in that it regards the molecules of living 

 matter (biomolecules) as the ultimate units. It is not on 

 the physical but the chemical nature of these molecules 

 that an explanation is to be found. The phenomena of life 

 being of the nature of chemical phenomena, it stands to 

 reason that any attempt to explain them by such physical 

 properties as morphological structure must fail. A chemi- 

 cal phenomenon is based on the chemical composition 

 of the body, that is, on its molecular structure. " The 

 intimate cause of the characteristic phenomena of life rests 



