668 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION I, 
But if the organic chemist will get into touch with the animal, it is sure 
that the possession of his special knowledge will serve him well. Difficulties 
and peculiarities in connection with technique may lead the professor of pure 
chemistry to call his work amateurish, and certainly his results, unlike those 
of the physical chemist, will not straightway lend themselves to mathematical 
treatment. He may himself, too, meet from time to time the spectre of 
Vitalism, and be led quite unjustifiably to wonder whether all his work may 
not be wide of the mark. But if he will first obtain for us a further supply 
of valuable qualitative facts concerning the reactions in the body, we may then 
say to him, as Tranio said to his master : 
“The mathematics and the metaphysics 
Fall to them as you find your stomach serves you.’ 
All of us who are engaged in applying chemistry and physics to the study 
of living phenomena are apt to be posed with questions as to our goal, although 
we have but just set out on our journey. It seems to me that we should be 
content to believe that we shall ultimately be able at least to describe the living 
animal in the sense that the morphologist has described the dead; if such 
descriptions do not amount to final explanations, it is not our fault. If in 
‘life’ there be some final residuum fated always to elude our methods, there is 
always the comforting truth to which Robert Louis Stevenson gave perhaps 
the finest expression, when he wrote : 
‘To travel hopefully is better than to arrive, 
And the true success is labour.’ 
The following Reports were then read :— 
1. Fifth Interim Report on Anesthetics.—See Reports, p. 237. 
2. Report on Colour Vision and Colour Blindness.—See Reports, p. 258. 
3. Report on the Duciless Giane eed Reports, p. 259. 
4. Report on Electromotive Phenomena in Plants. 
See Reports, p. 244. 
5. Report on the Structure pew of the Mammalian Heart. 
See Reports, p. 258. 
6. Report on the Dissociation of Oxy-Hemoglobin at High Altitudes. 
See Reports, p. 260. 
7. Report onthe Effect of Low Temperature on Cold-blooded Animals. 
See Reports, p. 261. 
8. Report on the Occupation of a Table at the Zoological Station at 
Naples.—See Reports, p. 153. 
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12. 
Joint Meeting with the Sub-Section of Psychology.—See p. 678. 
