446 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION B. 
and in part at least converted into starch. The view may be taken that 
glucose is the primary product of condensation—that the formaldehydrol 
molecules become ranged against a glucose template in series of sixes, which 
are soldered by enzymic influence into a single molecule by the interaction 
of contiguous hydrogen and hydroxyl radicles along the chain. 
The glucose is thereafter carried a stage higher and converted into 
maltose or it may be that a maltose template is effective from the beginning 
and that the biose is the immediate product of condensation ; the conversion 
of maltose into starch must take place in some similar manner. The recent 
observation that cellobiose is a B-glucoside enables us to realise that the 
formation of cellulose differs from that of starch in that the glucose mole- 
cule, instead of being converted into the @-glucoside maltose, becomes 
changed into the correlated £-glucoside, a membrane being thus secured 
which can resist the diastic enzymes by which starch is attacked. 
The formation of the albuminoid substances may be regarded from a 
similar point of view. At present, however, there is no satisfactory evi- 
dence to show at what stage nitrogen is introduced into the molecule. As 
the plant takes up nitrogen in the form of nitrate, not as ammenia, it is 
probable that the nitrate is reduced to hydroxylamine and that this rather 
than ammonia is the active synthetic agent. Formaldehyde and hydroxyla- 
mine would yield formaldoxime, which would easily pass into methylamine 
on reduction; the interaction of formaldoxime and formaldehydrol might 
give rise to a higher aldoxime which would be easily convertible into amino- 
acetic acid (glycine). Higher glycines might be formed from glycine by 
syntheses similar to those Erlenmeyer has effected; but to account for the 
formation of asymmetric amino-acids it is necessary to assume that the 
action is controlled at this stage and that the glycine is formed against a 
template perhaps under the influence of an enzyme. 
Another conceivable mode of formation is by the fermentative degrada- 
tion of glucosamine. 
Until we know more of the order in which the amino-acid radicles are 
united in the various albuminoids and of the character of the associations 
other than those which are characteristic of polyeptides, we can consider 
the formation of albuminoids only from a very general point of view; but 
taking into account the very different proportions in which amino-acids and 
other cleavage products are formed on hydrolysing substances of different 
origin, it is clear that the several sections of the molecule must be differently 
ordered in the different proteins ; again, therefore, it is necessary to assume 
that the formation of such substances is directed. We may picture mole- 
cule after molecule as being ‘ brought into line’ against a template and the 
junctions which are required to bind the whole series together as being 
made through the agency of the enzymic dehydrating influence before 
referred to. 
Attention has been called to the relatively simple way in which the 
hydrocarbons are constructed, that even the paraffins are not to be visualised 
as so many ducks strung upon a ramrod, Minchausen fashion, but as 
forming curls, owing to the natural set of the affinities. This probably is 
true of complex substances such as the proteins. 
Protoplasm, in fact, may be pictured as made up of large numbers of 
curls, like a judge’s wig—all in intercommunication through some centre, 
connected here and there perhaps also by lateral bonds of union. If 
such a point of view be accepted, it is possible to account for the occurrence 
in some sections of the complex series of interchanges which involve work 
being done upon the substances brought into interaction, the necessary 
energy being drawn from some other part of the complex where the inter- 
changes involve a liberation of energy. . 
The conclusions thus arrived at may be utilised in discussing the problem 
of heredity. The inheritance of parental qualities, the need to assume - 
