188 THE METABOLIC STATE. 



matter such as the metabolic by complexity of com- 

 bination and grouping. 



The supposition of three distinct states of combina- 

 tion of matter, all comprised in the term chemical in 

 its wide sense, but which we have no power of inter- 

 changing at will in the laboratory, is not unphilo- 

 sophical. -Almost all systematic treatises on chemistry 

 describe the elements as bodies which have not yet 

 been decompounded, though not necessarily undecom- 

 poundable ; while no one asserts the practicability of 

 their transmutation. On the contrary, the whole 

 fabric of modern chemistry rests on the certainty that 

 you will get back, weight for weight, every particle of 

 those elements on analysis : and never that you may 

 get weight for weight of the atoms of one element 

 combined into another or split into several other ele- 



Prof. Clerk- Maxwell, in his text-book on "Heat," in 1872. Means 

 ! being thus wanting to decompose the elements, S. Brown believed, 

 however, that he had demonstrated their compound nature by syn- 

 thesis, and that he had formed silicon by uniting four atoms of carbon. 

 These experiments have not succeeded in the hands of any other chemist 

 as yet, and therefore we must suppose there must have been some un- 

 detected source of fallacy, either in his experiments or the repetition 

 of them. 



We have seen that Fletcher held the living matter to be in a quite 

 different state from ordinary chemical combination, and possessing 

 powers of analysis and synthesis of which the experience of the labora- 

 tory can give us no idea. And from the difficulty still existing of 

 accounting for the origin of some elements in certain plants, he was 

 inclined to the belief that the elements themselves were decomposed, 

 and re-combined in the living matter. Samuel Brown, in accordance 

 with his theory of the compound nature of the elements, agrees to the 

 probability of the supposition, and says, " Indeed, the carbon, oxygen, 

 hydrogen, and nitrogen which have been extracted from organic bodies 

 may often be mere products of transformation" (76). Arid he sug- 

 gests that the silica found in the larger reeds, as the bamboo, grown, 

 in soil without an apparently adequate supply of that earth, to the 

 puzzlement of botanists, may be formed from carbon by the living 

 plant. It is proper, however, to say that an absolute deficiency of 

 -sufficient silica in the soil has not been demonstrated. 



