20 C. E. FAWSITT. 



Simplest form of life. 

 Some of us would not consider we had made (living) pro- 

 toplasm unless we could obtain a very simple form of life 

 similar, say to an amoeba or a bacterium, but Professor 

 Schaefer is not immediately so ambitious as this, and 

 expects the first synthetic protoplasm obtained to be some- 

 thing very much simpler than an amoeba. Again, even 

 granting that such a simple form of "protoplasm" as sug- 

 gested by Schaefer could be made, there would still be a 

 big task before us in evolving one of our known simple 

 types from this neoprotoplasm ; but there is, to my mind, 

 considerable uncertainty as to whether a synthetic pro- 

 toplasm would have all the essential properties of ordinary 

 protoplasm. It was at one time considered a remarkable 

 thing when Faraday (1825) found two substances of similar 

 chemical composition but of different molecular weight 

 and of different properties (polymerism). Again, in 1828, 

 Wohler succeeded in preparing urea from its isomer, 

 ammonium cyanate. Both these substances have the same 

 chemical composition and the same molecular weight, but 

 they have different properties. 



Some types of Isomerism. 



In 1848 Pasteur succeeded in producing the dextro- and 

 laevo- forms of tartaric acid, (stereoisomers); these sub- 

 stances have the same molecular weight and the same 

 chemical composition, and are similar in all physical pro- 

 perties save two, — a. very slight difference in the crystals 

 of the two modifications, and a difference in the action of 

 the two modifications on polarised light. 



Within the last few years we have come to discover 

 elements which are identical in all chemical properties but 

 have different atomic weights. It will therefore be no 

 surprise to us if a first synthetic protoplasm which may be 

 prepared, differs in some properties from the (living) pro- 



