862 
Plant  Constituents. 
(Am.  Jour,  Pharm. 
t      Dec,  1921. 
ments  of  the  muscles.  The  problem  has  been  made  a  study  lon^ 
ago,  but  is  too  far  away  from  pharmacy  for  me  to  intrude. 
The  second  question  was,  "In  your  laboratory  you  exhibited  to 
us  the  Brownian  Points,  those  eternally  whirling,  never-stop  entities 
that  seem  to  have  motions  of  their  own.  May  I  ask,  do  they  whirl 
in  the  night?  Are  they  still  when  it  is  perfectly  dark?"  I  had 
never  thought  of  that  problem,  and  I  answered,  "I  don't  know." 
We  do  not  know  when  we  look  through  a  film  of  liquid  so 
thin  that  it  separates  two  parallel  glasses,  that  point,  magnified  under 
the  ultra-microscope  is  seen  to  contain  thousands  of  whirling  points 
as  bright  as  miniature  stars.  Likened  may  they  be  to  twinkling  star 
dust  of  space  in  the  infinitely  little.  The  question,  "Do  they  whirl  in 
the  night?"  is,  so  far  as  I  know,  unanswered.  "Is  it  light  that  makes 
them  whirl  ?"  I  don't  know.  I  would  like  to  say,  in  this  connection, 
there  is  but  one  Chemist,  and  Alchemist,  the  Creator  of  all  things. 
Let  me  illustrate.  I  have  some  specially  made  apparatus  on  this 
table.  Whatever  I  desire  to  illustrate  necessitates  apparatus  devised 
for  that  specific  purpose. 
Listen:  The  Alchemist  I  mention,  by  means  of  a  little  dirt,  a 
little  water  and  a  little  sunshine,  brings  life  into  a  seed,  and  it  be- 
comes something  unexplainable.  A  little  dirt,  water  and  sunshine, 
then  comes  a  living  sprout  to  grow  into  its  own  kind — blossom,  fruit 
— and  give  of  its  life  current  vitality  to  a  new  crop  of  seeds  that 
carry  the  parent  stock  to  generation  after  generation.  Not  one  life- 
carrying  seed,  even  microscopic  in  size,  has  man,  with  all  his  ap- 
paratus and  presumed  scientific  knowledge,  ever  formed. 
Listen:  Some  years  ago  a  talented  biologist  in  Chicago  an- 
nounced that  artificial  life  had  been  evolved  in  sea  creatures  by 
stimulating  their  eggs  into  life,  "fertilizing"  them  by  dilute  saline 
liquids.  Probably  the  public  press  grossly  exaggerated  his  state- 
ments, or  even  perverted  them  into  the  assertion  that  he  had  created 
life  artificially.  At  that  date  I  chanced  to  be  in  New  York  City  and 
defended  the  biologist  as  probably  being  misquoted,  or  under- 
quoted, and  at  the  same  time  challenged  the  life  creation  argument. 
"If  he  makes  the  egg,  then  vitalizes  it,  I  will  accept  that  he  has  pro- 
duced life  artificially,"  I  said.  Has  it  ever  been  done?  But  to  return 
to  our  subject. 
Concerning  Light  and  Heat. — Prof.  Crooks  discovered  that  if 
across  an  exactly  balanced  rod  that  rests  on  the  point,  be  placed  four 
