*jSS.Tay mS] proceedings OF SOCIETIES. 317 
sea deposits, lie had not discovered any evidence to warrant the 
conclusions to which Professor Huxley had arrived. It must be 
remembered that the deposits, although brought up living from the 
bottom of the sea, would necessarily undergo certain changes after 
having been kept for some time confined in a vessel. Their appear- 
ance would not be the same as when first brought up. 
With regard to the organic matter called Bathyhium, he had ex- 
amined deposits in the gutters, and had seen the same characteristics 
in those as in the deep-sea deposits. A very favourable locality for 
collecting these deposits was at the outlet of the Metropolitan Main 
Sewer at Crossness. 
Mr. Slack said he should like to have some explanation of one or 
two points mentioned in Dr. Beale's paper. Dr. Beale speaks of the 
total difference between matter in the living and matter in the dead 
state. Now, this " total difference " may be taken to include chemical 
difference, of which evidence does not appear. The nutrition of the 
higher animals consisted in the assimilation of such matters as fibrine, 
casein, gluten, and certain hydrocarbons, and these substances be- 
longed to the same chemical series as the bodies composing the animal 
tissues. 
He would also inquire why Dr. Beale asserts that when chemical 
changes occur in the body they totally differ from those which take 
place in the laboratory ? (Dr. Beale here signified his dissent from 
Mr. Slack's inference.) 
Further, they had been told by Dr. Beale that the living body 
supplies nothing analogous to the complicated apparatus of a chemist's 
laboratory. Now, the apparatus of a chemical laboratory comprises 
the means for raising the temperature of the substances to be experi- 
mented upon. If it was wished to obtain destructive decomposition, 
great heat was employed. If it was desired to separate certain organic 
units from a complex body, much less heat is employed ; and living 
organisms supply the temperature fitted for actions of this description. 
Again, the chemist employs filters and dialysers, which give a pre- 
ferential entrance or exit to certain things ; and in this he only 
clumsily imitates the operations carried on by organic membranes and 
tissues. 
He would ask Dr. Beale whether he had not gone too far in pro- 
testing against those who object to the undefined use of the term 
" vital force ? " Until we were told exactly what " vital force " did, 
and how we could distinguish its action from that of other forces, we 
could not use the term with any precision. Many organic substances 
which we were told a few years ago could only be formed by " vital 
force " were now made in the laboratory by purely chemical means, as 
Wohler, Berthelot, and others had shown. 
Mr. Breese said that, looking at science in its ordinary form, it 
might be possible to dogmatize too much on the vital principle. He 
would ask Dr. Beale one question, however. In the human form we 
know little of nervous force. With the brain at one end and the ter- 
minal nerves at the other, nothing is known of the means by which 
communication is carried on between them. He should be glad to 
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