80 BEALE'S PROTOPLASMIC THEORY. 



any other of the properties enumerated in the above 

 sentence, therefore catalysis explains nothing of the 

 very points most requiring explanation, and which 

 must be presumed to depend on a complexity of mole- 

 cular constitution far surpassing anything known in 

 chemistry in fact the state swi generis of Fletcher 

 and which is quite incompatible with the simple 

 attitude of double decomposition essential for cata- 

 lysis. 



I may suggest that the difficulty would be clearly 

 expressed by the statement that for every molecule of 

 simpler formed-material a portion of protoplasm must 

 die and split up, sufficient to have maintained that in 

 the living state. If a particle of starch is deposited 

 so much protoplasm must die as contained its elements 

 in the living state ; not that the starch alone died out 

 and left the remaining elements of its protoplasm still 

 living. Hence it must follow that a much larger 

 quantity of protoplasm must die than the correspond- 

 ing quantity of the specific formed-material, and of 

 necessity a number of by-products must always be 

 formed in every act of nutrition and secretion, and, in 

 fact, in every vital act. And these must have a com- 

 pensating or complementary character. 



Dr. Beale seems to suggest this in the following 

 words : " When germinal matter becomes resolved into 

 formed material, other compounds are produced besides 

 the special ones which characterize that particular 

 kind of germinal matter " (Todd and Bowman, 104). 

 And again speaking of the vegetable cell ; " in all these 

 cases the formation of the peculiar and characteristic 

 substance which accumulates, is accompanied by the 



