98 
EDWARD TYSON REICHERT 
importance in relation to the mechanisms of living matter have been 
brought to light, and hence the way shown for developments of the 
greatest moment in normal and abnormal biology, as for instance: 
1. It seems obvious that we have found a strictly scientific basis 
for the classification of plants and animals. 
2. There are manifestly certain striking applications that are of 
the greatest fundamental importance in the study of phylogeny, 
mutations, reversions, sex, malformations, phenomena of heredity in 
general, etc. (For an application, see article on The Germplasm 
as a Stereochemic System, Science, 40: 649-661. 1914.) 
3. The discovery of the existence of highly specialized stereoisomers 
has brought before us one of the most remarkable and unsuspected 
phenomena of living matter, and one which leads us directly to the 
constitutions of various forms of protoplasm and the peculiarities of 
vital phenomena that are dependent upon these differences. 
Department of Physiology, 
University of Pennsylvania 
