Desiccation of Albumin iiioon its Goagidahility. 333- 



be susceptible to coagulation at about 60 — 62° C."^ Hence it is fair 

 to infer that although the slight amount of moisture introduced during 

 the opening of the tube did not suffice to enable complete coagulation 

 to occur, it did permit the early changes to begin, and to slowly, and 

 in a modified way, to affect the entire mass. This experiment was. 

 repeated several times, and always with the same result. 



It seems difficult, in the light of the foregoing observations, to resist 

 the inference that in the complete absence of moisture albumin may be 

 reduced to a state of relative molecular (or micellar) immobility ; the 

 rearrangements which, in the presence of water and at a sufficiently 

 high temperature, normally take place in its ultimate structure being 

 held in abeyance during the suspension of the essential condition of 

 the presence of sufficient moisure. The substance is brought, so tO' 

 speak, into a static condition ; chemical or physico-chemical change is 

 inhibited, just as is an interaction between phosphorus and oxygen 

 when conditions of complete dryness obtain. It is tempting to 

 extend these considerations to the case of seeds and spores, e.g., of 

 certain bacteria, and to ask whether similar conclusions may not be- 

 fairly assumed to" obtain there, for it may well be a fact that the 

 protoplasm, like the albumin, which is at any rate akin to it, when 

 sufficiently desiccated withstands conditions which otherwise would 

 certainly promote chemical disintegration. They, too, appear to be 

 reduced to a " static " condition by drying, and the researches of 

 Romanes! indicated no measurable chemical change as proceeding in 

 them under these circumstances ; and, again, the investigations of 

 Brown and Escombe,J and of Sir W. Thiselton-Dyer,§ have also^ 

 rendered it difficult to believe, when subjected to the other end of the 

 scale of temperature, that any metabolism can really be proceeding.. 

 In these cases the molecular machinery of life is all present and intact, 

 but the manifestation of vitality, as measured by chemical movement and 

 by the change in the condition of energy, is absent. But such a state 

 differs widely from death, seeing that when the conditions favourable 

 to the continuous progress of those reactions which are associated with 

 vitality are restored, the organism proceeds to work in the . normal 

 manner once more. Similarly the albumin heated in the desiccated 

 form retains, instead of changing, that particular molecular condition 

 which enables it, on restoring the essential conditions of moisture, to 

 coagulate in a normal fashion when heated to a suitable degree of tem- 

 perature. 



* A solution of albumen treated witli a very small quantity of a dilute solutiou 

 of potash undergoes a similar change. Tlie substance formed is not true alkali- 

 albumen, since no precipitate is produced on neutralising, and a coagulum on- 

 heating this neutralised solution. 



t ' Proc. Eoy. Soc.,' vol. 57. 



X Hid., vol. 62. 



§ Ihid., vol. 65. 



