3 2 ALB UMEN NO T PROD UCED AR TIFICIALL Y. 



in the animal body." For the present, however, we are un- 

 fortunately constrained to substitute for the " more or less 

 similar to " " absolutely different from" 



Of the chemical composition, and of the actual state, 

 speaking in a physical sense, of the living matter, we know 

 as yet almost nothing. Nor have we even been able to 

 hit upon any method of investigation which offers a fair 

 chance of enabling us to ascertain the knowledge we so 

 much desire to gain. If we attempt to analyze living matter 

 it becomes changed. We examine not the actual living 

 growing, matter itself, but the substances which result from 

 its death. The facts of the case do not permit us to 

 conclude that the materials we discover actually existed 

 during life. On the contrary, the evidence is conclusive 

 that the substances we test and examine, and handle, did 

 not exist in the condition or state known to us until the 

 matter of which they consisted had ceased to live. The 

 chemist boasts that ere long every animal and vegetable 

 principle will be built up artificially in the laboratory, 

 although he has not yet succeeded in demonstrating the 

 composition of the most important substances which are 

 to be obtained from all living organisms. There is not a 

 living thing from which a substance having the reactions of 

 albumen cannot be obtained, but nothing like albumen has 

 yet been prepared artificially. Surely the facts do not at all 

 justify the confident boastings in which many chemists and 

 physicists have recently indulged. The gap between that 

 which has been actually achieved and that which it may be 

 possible to effect, is, it seems to me far too wide to be 

 measured and bridged over ; and is it not probable that it 

 will be found to be much wider than was supposed, when 



