BOTANICAL WORK OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 475 



In the remarks I made to the Chemical Society, T ventured to express 

 my conviction that the chemical processes which took place under the 

 influence of protoplasm were probably of a different 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 (Pharm. Journ., 1890, 773) has remarked: "In order to isolate 

 an organic substance we are generally confined to the purely accidental 

 properties of crystallization and volatilization." In other words, the 

 chemist only deals with bodies of great molecular stability; while it 

 can not 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 Meldola (Nature, X LII, 

 250) thinks that the investigation of photochemical processes "may 

 lead to the recognition of a new order of chemical attraction, or of the 

 old chemical attraction in a different degree." I am delighted to see tha t 

 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 (loc. 

 cit., 13): "They are exceedingly labil compounds that can be easily 

 converted into relatively stable ones. A great lability is the indispen- 

 sable 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 motion in the labil position of atoms 

 in molecules, a source that has hitherto not been taken into considera- 

 tion either by chemists or by physicists. 1 ' 



But I must say no more. The problems to which I might invite atten- 

 tion on an occasion like this are endless. I have not even attempted 

 to do justice to the work that has been accomplished among 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 pros- 

 pects of the future of our section possess every element of promise. 



