316 Notes and Comments. 
of parents who, having themselves experienced intellectual 
curiosity and the joy of satisfying it, who, having themselves 
felt the gain of a wider outlook on men and things, may by 
their example inspire their children with a similar disinterested 
desire for learning and culture. 
PROF. W. M. BAYLISS’S ADDRESS. 
The Physiological Importance of Phase Boundaries was the 
subject of Prof. Bayliss’s address to the Physiological Section. 
He stated that we may conclude that more study of the 
phenomena at phase boundaries will throw light on many prob- 
lems still obscure. It would probably not be going too far 
to say that the peculiarities of the phenomena called ‘ vital’ 
are due to the fact that they are manifestations of interchange 
of energy between the phases of heterogeneous systems. It 
was Clerk Maxwell who compared the transactions of the mater- 
ial universe to mercantile operations in which so much credit 
is transferred from one place to another, energy being the 
representative of credit. There are many indications that it 
is just in this process of change of energy from one form to 
another that special degrees of activity are to be observed. 
Such, for example, are the electrical phenomena seen in the 
oxidation of phosphorus or benzaldehyde, and it appears that, 
in the photo-chemical system of the green plant, radiant energy 
is caught on the way, as it were, to its degradation to heat, 
and utilised for chemical work. In a somewhat similar way, 
it might be said that money in the process of transfer is more 
readily diverted, although perhaps not always to such good 
purpose as in the chloroplast. Again, just as in commerce 
money that is unemployed is of no value, so it is in physiology, 
Life is incessant change or transfer of energy, and a system in 
statical equilibrium is dead. 
PROF. E. A. MINCHIN’S ADDRESS. 
Prof. Minchin’s address to the Zoological Section was on 
a well-worn topic, ‘ The Evolution of the Cell,’ but was dealt 
with in the light of recent work. He stated: ‘I have set 
forth my conceptions of the nature of the simplest forms of 
life and of the course taken by the earliest stages 01 evolution, 
striving all through to treat the problem from a strictly ob- 
jective standpoint, and avoiding as far as possible the purely 
speculative and metaphysical questions which beset like pitfalls 
the path of those who attack the problem of life and vitalism. 
I have, therefore, refrained as far as possible from discussing 
such indefinable abstractions as ‘ living substance’ or ‘ life,’ 
phrases to which no clear meaning can be attached. How far 
my personal ideas may correspond to objective truth I could 
not, of course, pretend to judge. It may be that the mental 
pictures which I have attempted to draw are to be assigned, 
Naturalist, 
