38 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
visualise, much less imitate. The perpetual elaboration of fatty acids 
from carbohydrates, of proteins from amino-acids, of zymogens and 
hormones as practised by the living body are beyond the present com- 
prehension of the biochemist; but their recognition is his delight, and 
the hope of ultimately realising such marvels provides the dazzling 
goal towards which his efforts are directed. 
The Vegetable Alkaloids. 
The joyous contemplation of these wonders is an inalienable reward 
of chemical study, but it is denied to the vast majority of our people. 
The movements of currency exchange, to which the attention of the 
public has been directed continuously for several years, are clumsy 
contortions compared with the chemical transformations arising from 
food exchange. It should not be impossible to bring the skeleton of 
these transformations within the mental horizon of those who’ take 
pleasure in study and reflection; and to those also the distinction 
between plants and animals should be at least intelligible. The wonderful 
power which plants exercise in building up their tissues from carbonic 
acid, water and nitrogen, contrasted with the powerlessness of animals 
to utilise these building materials until they have been already assembled 
by plants, is a phenomenon too fundamental and illuminating to be 
withheld, as it now is, from all but the few. For by its operation 
the delicate green carpet, which we all delight in following through 
the annual process of covering the fields with golden corn, is accom- 
plishing throughout the summer months a vast chemical synthesis of 
starch for our benefit. Through the tiny pores in those tender blades 
are circulating freely the gases of the atmosphere, and from those 
gases—light, intangible nothingness, as we are prone to regard them— 
this very tangible and important white solid compound is_ being 
elaborated. The chemist cannot do this. Plants accomplish it by their 
most conspicuous feature, greenness, which enables them to put solar 
energy into cold storage; they are accumulating fuel for subsequent 
development of bodily heat energy. Side by side with starch, however, 
these unadvertised silent chemical agencies elaborate molecules even 
more imposing, in which nitrogen is interwoven with the elements of 
starch, and thus are produced the vegetable alkaloids. 
In this province the chemist has been more fortunate, and successive 
generations of students have been instructed in the synthesis of piperine, 
coniine, trigonelline, nicotine, and extensions from the artificial produe- 
tion of tropine ; but until quite recently his methods have been hopelessly 
divergent from those of the plant. Enlightening insight into these, 
however, was given just four years ago by R. Robinson, who effected a 
remarkably simple synthesis of tropinone by the mere association of 
succindialdehyde, methylamine, and acetone in water, unassisted by 
a condensing agent or an increase of temperature : 
CH,.CH : 0 CH, ag reg —-CHy 
| | } | 
Ms Ie 
| + H.N.CH, + CO Shae N.CH; CO 
E | | 
| 
CH -— CR, 
| i 
CH,.CH : C CH, CH, 
