850 REPORT— 1895. 



in the plant. ' It may either be formed directly from glucose, ammonia (or nitrates) 

 and sulphates, or it may be a transitory product between protein-decomposition and 

 reconstructioQ from the fragments.' ' 



In the remarks I made to the Chemical Society I ventured to express my con- 

 viction that the chemical processes which took place under the influence of proto- 

 plasm were probably of a ditierent kind from those with which the chemist is ordinarily 

 occupied. The plant produces a profusion of substances, apparently with great 

 facility, which the chemist can only build up in the most circuitous way. As 

 Victor Meyer - has remarked : ' In order to isolate an organic substance we are 

 generally confined to the purely accidental properties of crystallisation and volatili- 

 sation.' In other words, the chemist only deals with bodies of great molecular 

 stability; while it cannot be doubted that those which play a part in the processes 

 of life are the very opposite in every respect. I am convinced that if the chemist 

 is to help in the field of protoplasmic activity, he will have to transcend his 

 present limitations, and be prepared to admit that as there may be more than one 

 algebra, there may be more than one chemistry. I am glad to see that a somewhat 

 similar idea has been suggested by other fields of inquiry. Professor Meldol a ^ 

 thinks that the investigation of photochemical processes ' may lead to the recog- 

 nition of a new order of chemical attraction, or of the old chemical attraction in 

 a different degree.' I am delighted to see that the ideas which were floating, 

 I confess, in a very nebulous form in my brain are being clothed with greater 

 ■precision by Loew. 



In the paper which I have already quoted, he says of proteids : * ' They are 

 exceedingly lahil compounds that can be easily converted into relatively stable ones. 

 A great lability is the indispensable and necessary foundation for the production 

 •of the various actions of the living protoplasm, for the mode of motions that move 

 the life-machinery. There is a source of motioti in the labil position of atoms in 

 molecules, a source that has hitherto not been taken into consideration either by 

 chemists or by physicists.' 



But I must say no more. The problems to which I might invite attention on 

 an occasion like this are endless. I have not even attempted to do justice to the 

 work that has been accomplished amongst ourselves, full of interest and novelty 

 as it is. But I will venture to say this, that if capacity and earnestness afford an 

 augury of success, the prospects of the future of our Section possess every element 

 of promise. 



The following Papers were read : — 



1. On a False Bacterium. By Professor Marshall Ward, F.B.S. 



The author has isolated from the Thames a form which gives all the ordinary 

 reactions of a bacterium in plate-cultures and tube-cultures in gelatine, agar, potato, 

 broth, milk, &c. 



It is a rod-like form, 1 ft thick, and up to 2-4 fi long, stains like a bacillus, 

 and cannot be distinguished from a true Schizomycete by the methods in common 

 use. 



On cultivating it under high powers — one-twelfth and one-twentieth oil im- 

 mersions — from the single cell, however, it is found to form small, shortly branched 

 mycelia the growth and segmentation of which are acropetal. This turns out to be 

 a minute oidial form of a true fungus. 



Its true nature can only be ascertained by the isolation and culture through all 

 stages from the single cell, according to the original methods of gelatine cultures 

 of Klebs, Brefeld, and De Bary which preceded and suggested the methods em- 

 ployed by bacteriologists; and the facts discovered raise interesting questions as to 

 the character of alleged ' branching ' bacteria on the one hand, and the multiple 

 derivation of the heterogeneous group of micro-organisms, termed bacteria in general 

 on the other. 



> Zoc. cit., G4. ^ Pharm. Jonrn., 1890, 773. 



Nature, xlii. 250 , Loc. cit., 13, 



