158 ANIMAL CHEMISTRY LECTURE VI. 



to the action of ozone. And in some of these oxidations the 

 curious circumstance was noted, that between the original sub- 

 stance stearic acid C^gH^C^, or benzoic acid C 7 H6O 2 , for in- 

 stance and the final carbonic acid, no intermediate products 

 could be detected. It seemed, indeed, as if portion after portion 

 of the original substance was completely oxidised and broken 

 up into separate molecules of carbonic acid, instead of the entire 

 substance undergoing a gradual oxidation and simplification, by 

 the successive burning off of its constituent carbon-atoms, one 

 after another, into carbonic acid. With such facts as these before 

 us, I would submit that the so-called resolvent action of alkalies 

 upon the animal economy, like that of iodine, is a direct conse- 

 quence of the peculiar chemical characterisation by which they 

 are enabled to act as oxidising agents. 



(165.) Despite, however, the interest of these questions, upon 

 which I have been able to bestow but a very hasty notice, I must 

 now break off their discussion altogether, and regretfully take my 

 leave of you. In bringing this course of lectures to a conclusion, 

 I have to thank you, my indulgent auditors, and more particu- 

 larly the President and Fellows of the College, for the kind 

 encouragement which your continued presence has afforded me. 

 I am aware how far short my lectures have fallen of that de- 

 gree of excellence which I had hoped to attain, and you had a 

 right to expect ; and how much the measure of success which has 

 attended them must be attributed to the intrinsic merit of the 

 subject, and your good-natured willingness to be pleased with its 

 expounder. I have endeavoured throughout to bring prominently 

 before you the dynamical idea of organic chemistry, as connected 

 with changes of composition. I have shown you that, in the 

 organism of the plant, carbonic acid and water are submitted to 

 a constant deoxidising change, whereby they become successively 

 converted into more and more complex bodies, many of which 

 we are now able to produce, all of which we hope some day to 

 produce, by similar processes in the laboratory ; that the change 

 in composition undergone by carbonic acid and water is attended 

 by a storing-up of solar force in the resulting products, and that 



