26 



bth January, 1902. 



Professor Redfern, M.D., F.R.C.S.I., in the Chair. 



RESPIRATION. 

 By Joseph Barcroft, M.A. 



{Abstract?) 



Mr. Barcroft said that on a previous occasion he had the 

 pleasure of addressing the Belfast Natural History and 

 Philosophical Society upon a subject which, among physical 

 phenomena, has always been of peculiar interest to himself — 

 namely, " The Properties of Liquid Surfaces." The interest of 

 such a subject as that seemed, however, to fade before the 

 fascination possessed by even the simplest process of living 

 matter. There is a subtlety about the secret of life, an 

 uncertainty as to whether the chemical changes which take 

 place in living matter are governed by the laws which are 

 enunciated in the laboratory that make the study of the 

 functions of living matter especially alluring. 



On occasions the physical and chemical properties of living 

 matter seem to be exactly the opposite of those displayed by 

 that which is inanimate. He would take two examples. 

 There could be no greater travesty of their ordinary ideas than 

 that water should flow upwards, yet when they got into the 

 domain of life they saw trees one hundred, two hundred feet 

 high, and in the fine tubes composing the wood of those trees 

 they knew that the sap is continually ascending. 



Drawing attention to the burning of a match, the lecturer 

 proceeded to say that the wood was decomposing with evolution 



