AueusT 23, 1918] 
gift of remembering what he has read but of for- 
getting that he has read it. 
This idea is expressed by Clowes as follows: 
This statement is somewhat surprising in the 
face of Pickering’s emulsification of 99 per cent. 
of oil in 1 per cent. of an aqueous soap solution, 
and Fischer’s own data and illustrations (pages 40 
and 78) of emulsions (borrowed without acknowl- 
edgment from Pickering even to the stick stand- 
ing up in the jelly) in which 20 parts of oil are 
emulsified in one part of the water phase. 
The scientific aspects of these statements 
are covered in my book and will be more fully 
discussed at another time, but the implication 
of unacknowledged borrowing I can not allow 
to pass. It happens that I have never had ac- 
cess to this particular paper of Pickering, 
published, I think, in the Transactions of the 
Royal Society. I believe, however, that I am 
conversant with Pickering’s views on emul- 
sions from such of his papers as have been ac- 
eessible to me in the original. With regard to 
the stick inserted in the jelly to test its stiff- 
ness, what more boyish means could any in- 
vestigator employ for such a purpose? Surely 
he would not need to borrow from a printed il- 
lustration so simple an empirical device. 
Clowes continues: 
In borrowing from earlier investigators the idea 
of tackling the problem of protoplasmic balance by 
studying the reversal of phase relations in emul- 
sions, Dr. Fischer failed to make himself ac- 
quainted with the data already available regarding 
the conditions under which emulsions of water in 
oil may be formed, and emulsions of this type 
transformed into those of oil in water and vice 
versa. 
_ Although I do not understand the expression 
“protoplasmic balance,” Clowes evidently be- 
lieves that I have slighted his work. On the 
contrary, Clowes’s work on the theory of emul- 
sification and his experiments on the transfor- 
mation of oil-in-water to water-in-oil emul- 
sions are fully acknowledged on pages 28, 29 
and 80 of my book. I go so far as to try to 
harmonize our views, although I must now con- 
fess my inability to understand much of his 
work owing to the fact that he writes diffusely 
and jumbles good experimental observations 
SCIENCE 195 
with hypotheses. Here as elsewhere, however, 
I have followed a principle which has guided 
all my writings, namely, that of discovering 
and emphasizing only the positive eontribu- 
tions of any author, and of ignoring what 
seem to me his mistakes or false guesses. 
Clowes writes further: 
In the chapter on fatty degeneration, Fischer 
fails entirely to give credit to Alonzo E. Taylor. 
This statement is characteristically inaccurate, 
for Taylor’s work is discussed on page 69 of 
my book. One is tempted to say of Clowes 
what Bancroft says of me, “It is a little diffi- 
cult to characterize the author’s methods and 
yet keep within parliamentary limits.” Clowes 
might at least have done me the small justice 
of looking up Taylor’s name in the index. Yet, 
as a matter of fact, Taylor was interested only 
in that chemical aspect of the problem of fatty 
degeneration which asks whether fat may be 
formed from protein. My own contributions 
to the subject have nothing to do with this; 
they deal instead with the physics of the ques- 
tion. 
So far as the theory of emulsification is con- 
cerned, it is the intent in my volume to show 
that a union between solvent and lyophilie col- 
loid (the formation of “colloid solvates” or 
“ colloid hydrates”) is one of the large and im- 
portant factors in the maintenance of emul- 
sions. This contention of mine is accepted as 
correct in Bancroft and Clowes’s reviews. As 
a matter of fact the idea is looked upon by 
them as entirely self-evident, for Bancroft 
writes: 
When oil is emulsified in water by means of a 
third substance, one has drops of oil each coated by 
a gelatinous film. ... If we cut down the water 
sufficiently we shall get a limiting case where we 
have merely drops of oil surrounded by gelatinuous 
films. 
Clowes expresses the notion in the words: 
Bancroft’s demonstration that the formation of 
one or the other type of emulsion depends not upon 
the relative volumes of oil and water, but simply 
upon whether the emulsifying agent employed is 
preponderantly hydrophilic or lipophilic. . 
