ACCESSORY FOOD BODIES 117 



I have dealt in this chapter with the auximones 

 at greater length and in fuller detail than some 

 readers may think that the subject warrants. 



I make no excuse for so doing, as there is a possi- 

 bility that in the auximones derived from bacterized 

 peat we may have a substance of enormous value. 

 Wells, in his book of brilliant imagination, The Food 

 of the Gods, galvanized the public into an appreciation 

 of the meaning of vitamines. In treating the subject 

 he took the full licence of the novelist, and he would 

 doubtless be the last to suggest that by vitamines 

 or any other product it would be possible to upset 

 the unknown factors that determine the limits of 

 the growth of various species. Auximones will 

 never threaten the world with the menace that he 

 so graphically painted, but it is a fact that they do 

 aid plants to attain their fullest normal growth, and 

 it may prove to be a fact that they will prove 

 valuable in diseases of malnutrition. A preliminary 

 experiment, to which too much importance must 

 not be attached, has already been carried out at 

 King's College. Some chicks were taken straight 

 from the egg. One batch of them were fed on a 

 physiologically complete diet, and all naturally 

 developed poly neuritis gallinarum and died. The 

 other batch in addition to this diet also received 

 Phosphotungstic acid extract. They died also, but 

 later, and of ordinary chicken diseases. The details 

 of the experiment have not been published, and I am 

 mentioning it here rather in the hope of attracting 

 physiologists to undertake a research that seems as 

 if it might yield valuable results than as stating a 



