ORGANIC MATTER. 13 



conditions, is daily seen: the difficulty of every housewife 

 being to prevent them from decomposing. It is true that 

 when desiccated and kept from contact with air, they may be 

 preserved unchanged for long periods ; but the fact that they 

 can be only thus preserved, proves their great instability. It 

 is true, also, that these most complex nitrogenous principles 

 are not absolutely inert, since they enter into combinations 

 with some bases ; but their unions are very feeble. 



It should be noted, too, of these bodies, that though they 

 exhibit in the lowest degree that kind of molecular mobility 

 which implies facile vibration of the molecules as wholes, 

 they exhibit in high degrees that kind of molecular mobility 

 resulting in isomerism, which implies permanent changes in 

 the positions of adjacent atoms with respect to each other. 

 Each of them has a soluble and an insoluble form. In some 

 cases there are indications of more than two such forms. 

 And it appears that their metamorphoses take place under 

 very slight changes of conditions. 



In these most unstable and inert organic compounds, we 

 find that the molecular complexity reaches a maximum: not 

 only since the four chief organic elements are here united 

 with small proportions of sulphur and sometimes phosphorus ; 

 but also since they are united in high multiples. The 

 peculiarity which we found characterized even diatomic com- 

 pounds of the organic elements, that their molecules are 

 formed not of single equivalents of each component, but of 

 two, three, four, and more equivalents, is carried to the great- 

 est extreme in these compounds, which take the leading 

 part in organic actions. According to Lieberkiihn, the for- 

 mula of albumen is C72 H^a SNjg 022- That is to say, with 

 the sulphur there are united seventy-two atoms of carbon, 

 one hundred and twelve of hydrogen, eighteen of nitrogen, 

 and twenty-two of oxygen : the molecule being thus made up 

 of more than two hundred ultimate atoms. 



§ 5. Did space permit, it would be useful here to consider 

 in detail the interpretations that may be given of the pecu- 



