INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 35 
’ 
to abolish the use of the word ‘‘organic’’ in connec- 
tion with chemistry, and speak of inorganic or mineral 
chemistry on the one hand and protoplasmic chemistry on 
the other. The latter would be synonymous with physio- 
logy, while the former would comprise both the inorganic 
and the organic chemistry of our text books. The diff- 
culty is to avoid the word chemical as applied to the 
vital or protoplasmic state of matter; for if chemistry in 
the wide sense deals with the affinities and interactions of 
specifically different kinds of matter, the atomic and 
molecular interactions of protoplasm which constitute life 
must belong to chemistry in that wide sense. 
To appreciate the profound distinction between the 
laboratory and the protoplasmic departments of chemistry 
in its wide sense, let us contrast the very different medes 
in which a product common to both is formed. On the 
one hand we see a microscopic portion of protoplasm of 
a vegetable cell, without any apparatus to separate the 
different steps of the process, at common temperatures and 
in the presence of oxygen, forms directly from pabulum, 
containing none of the immediate precursors of the 
product, a secretion or substance—such as alizarin— 
which on the other hand can only be prepared in the 
laboratory through a long series of processes, some of 
them in closed vessels, or at high temperature incom- 
patible with life! Further, it was supposed by Liebig, 
that the process of assimilation in plants begins with the 
formation of some simply constituted body such as oxalic 
or formic acid, out of which more complex bodies are 
formed. But, as is urged by Schunck, “there is not the 
slightest evidence at present in favour of this view. The 
first product of assimilation that is distinctly recognised 
is starch, a highly complex body, which appears at 
once with all its characteristic properties, like Minerva 
3—2 
