PAKT I 



OBSERVATIONS 

 A. Investigations upon Oil-Foams 



1. Preparation and Structure of the Foams 



THE reflections and considerations set forth in the preceding 

 pages impelled me to try if it were possible to produce 

 artificial foams of the fineness that I believed to exist in 

 the instance of protoplasm. Although it was scarcely to be 

 expected that such attempts would produce results at all 

 considerable, I thought nevertheless that something or other 

 of importance might possibly be attained by such a course. 

 Hence I sought to follow it up, as soon as time and 

 opportunity offered, on the completion of my work upon 

 Protozoa. Experiments of this kind could at first be little 

 better than a blind groping about, as it were, in the hope 

 of finding a possible starting-point from which advance 

 might be made in a more methodical and confident manner. 

 I began this attempt with a feeling of vague uncertainty, 

 such as the alchemists must have felt in their hopeless 

 experiments. This uncertainty was, as may be easily con- 

 ceived, heightened by the fact that I was setting foot in a 

 region in which I was very little at home, and the difficulties 

 of which were hence far beyond my ken. Still this 

 ignorance proved perhaps, if anything, serviceable ; with a 

 sufficient appreciation of the difficult problems of molecular 



