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EESPIEATION AND CELL ENEEGY. 
By Hoeace a. Wager, A.E.C.S. 
(Eead March 20, 1911.) 
It has been known for a long time that a supply of free oxygen is 
necessary for the carrying on of the vital processes connected with living 
protoplasm whether of plants or animals. A lack of oxygen means 
suffocation and eventually death for all living organisms. Protoplasm is a 
substance of proteid nature endowed with the mysterious property of 
vitality. Every organism, whether plant or animal, consists of either a 
single particle of protoplasm, or of a more or less complex body made up 
of a large number of such particles called cells. The vitality of the 
protoplasm is now supposed to be connected with a continuous state of 
internal molecular activity which appears to be a concomitant of all living 
protoplasm. The continuance of this molecular activity, and therefore 
the vitality of all living cells, is more or less dependent on the presence in 
the surrounding medium of free oxygen, but oxygen is not the cause of 
this activity. That is a property innate in the living protoplasm itself or 
due to its peculiar chemical composition. Oxygen cannot produce those 
movements of the atoms which are peculiar to living protoplasm of either 
plants or animals, as it is impossible to resuscitate dead protoplasm by a 
supply of oxygen. This molecular activity consists of the decomposi- 
tion of the protoplasm together with the decomposition of the food 
substances in the cell and the reconstruction of the protoplasm and 
the building up of compounds required in the structure and well-being 
of the cell. This whole process is known as metabolism, the decomposi- 
tion being distinguished as katabolism, and the building up as anabolism. 
The elements chiefly concerned in these processes are Carbon, Hydrogen, 
Oxygen, Nitrogen, Sulphur, Phosphorus, which are supplied to plants in 
the form of various compounds, mostly in solution. The reconstructed 
compounds of the cell contain these elements in slightly different pro- 
portions from those found before decomposition, so that there results a 
