ADDHESS. 49 



hours, buttlieir vitality was not affected, their functional activities re- 

 mained unimpaired, and the cultures which they yielded were normal in 

 every respect. The same result was obtained when liquid hydrogen was 

 substituted for air. A similar persistence of life in seeds has been demon- 

 strated even at the lowest temperatures ; they were frozen for over a 

 hundred hours in liquid air, at the instance of Messrs. Brown and Escombe, 

 with no other result than to affect their protoplasm with a certain inert- 

 ness, from which it recovered with warmth. Subsequently commercial 

 samples of barley, pea, vegetable- marrow, and mustard seeds were literally 

 steeped for six hours in liquid hydrogen at the Royal Institution, yet 

 when they were sown by Sir W. T. Thiselton Dyer at Kew in the ordinary 

 way, the proportion in which germinatioa occurred was no less than in 

 the other batches of the same seeds which had suffered no abnormal treat- 

 ment. Bacteria are minute vegetable cells, the standard of measurement 

 for which is the 'mikron.' Yet it has been found possible to completely 

 triturate these microscopic cells, when the operation is carried out at the 

 temperature of liquid air, the cells then being frozen into hard break- 

 able masses. The typhoid organism has been treated in this way, and 

 the cell plasma obtained for the purpose of studying its toxic and immu- 

 nising properties. It would hardly have been anticipated that liquid air 

 should find such immediate application in biological research. A research 

 by Professor Macfadyen, just concluded, has shown that many varieties of 

 micro-organisms can be exposed to the temperature of liquid air for a 

 period of six months without any appreciable loss of vitality, although at 

 such a temperature the ordinary chemical processes of the cell must cease. 

 At such a temperature the cells cannot be said to be either alive or dead, 

 in the ordinary acceptation of these words. It is a new and hitherto un- 

 obtained condition of living matter — a third state. A final instance of 

 the application of the above methods may be given. Certain species of 

 bacteria during the course of their vital processes are capable of emitting 

 light. If, however, the cells be broken up at the temperature of liquid 

 air, and the crushed contents brought to the ordinary temperature, the 

 luminosity function is found to have disappeared. This points to the 

 luminosity not being due to the action of a ferment — a ' Luciferase ' — but 

 as being essentially bound up with the vital processes of the cells, and 

 dependent for its production on the intact organisation of the cell. These 

 attempts to study by frigorific methods the physiology of the cell have 

 already yielded valuable and encouraging results, and it is to be hoped 

 that this line of investigation will continue to be vigorously prosecuted at 

 the Jenner Institute. 



And now, to conclude an address which must have sorely taxed your 

 patience, I may remind you that I commenced by referring to the plaint 

 of Elizabethan science, that cold was not a natural available product. In 

 the course of a long struggle with nature, man, by the application of 

 intelligent and steady industry, has acquired a control over this agency 

 which enables him to produce it at will, and with almost any decree of 



1902. K 



