276 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [APRIL 
The general thesis of the book is that vital phenomena are explicable 
without invoking hypothetical or mysterious forces and are all referable to 
relatively simple fundamental causes. Since the minutest observable organ- 
isms undergo fission, the author makes the assumption that fission occurs 
also in the molecules of living substance. This he illustrates by the behavior 
of certain chemical compounds. Methyl-ethyl-ketone, for example, on taking 
up three atoms of oxygen, cleaves into two molecules of acetic acid. The 
chemical analogy may be carried further. By treating the acetic acid mole- 
cules with phosphorus pentachlorid, and the acetyl chlorid so formed with 
zinc ethyl, there are finally produced four molecules of methyl-ethyl-ketone 
and in the course of the process several by-products. Certainly such an 
analogy, if it be nothing more, renders easily conceivable the author’s hypo- 
thesis that assimilation of atoms or atomic groups from the medium brings 
about an increase and a rearrangement of the atoms in each molecule of liv- 
ing substance. When the proper relations within the molecule are reached, 
it divides into two new ones like the original; or into two (alike) which 
through a subsequent cycle of development produce molecules like the origi- 
nal ; or into two (unlike), only one of which develops and reproduces the origi- 
nal molecule, while the other finaliy produces again unlike molecules. By 
assuming this different behavior the author explains the production of non- 
living matter by living, and the origin of genetic and somatic plasma. 
The respiratory and photosynthetic activities of these living molecules are - 
elucidated in terms of this hypothesis ; certainly what we know of them falls 
in with it easily. 
The next assumption is that many unlike biomolecules, to use the author’s 
word for living molecules, are aggregated into living particles, or biomores, 
in which they have an arrangement determined by the chemical affinity of the 
various atoms and groups, and shifting as the chemical constitution changes. 
The life of the biomore, however, does not depend on its constitution but on 
the life of the biomolecules. 
The aggregate of biomores, submerged in water (not of constitution as 
Nageli held, but of capillarity), constitutes the bioplasm. Any view as to 
the morphological structure of the bioplasm, whether the filar structure of 
Flemming, the reticular of Frommann, the alveolar of Biitschli, or the granu- 
lar of Maggi and Altmann, is equally consonant with this theory. 
The bioplasm is not of indefinite extension but consists of small masses, 
each a symbiotic system of unlike biomores, constituting a biomonad. A 
very complex biomonad, especially when biomores constituting a nucleus are 
present, is a cell. 
ell division is based upon the same fundamental principle as the fission 
of the biomolecules. In them it is not mere addition of atoms which suffices 
to bring about division, but their mutual relations and orientation. In the 

