ineral or organic in type. One of the first problems in the study of
protoplasm is, therefore, to bring this great variety of complex compounds
into some orderly classification and to become familiar with their
compositions and properties. Again, living matter is continually undergoing
a process of breaking down as a result of its energetic activities and of
simultaneously making good this loss by the manufacture of new protoplasm
out of simple food materials. It also has the power of growth by the
production of surplus protoplasm which fills new cells, which in turn
produce new tissues and so increase the size and weight of individual
organs and of the organism as a whole. Hence, a second field of study
includes the chemical changes whereby new protoplasm and new
tissue-building material are elaborated. Finally, living material not only
repairs its own waste and produces new material of like character to it,
but it also produces new masses of living matter, which when detached from
the parent mass, eventually begin a separate existence and growth.
Furthermore, the plant organism has acquired, by the process of evolution,
the ability not only to produce an embryo for a successive generation but
also to store up, in the tissues adjacent to it, reserve food material for
the use of the young seedling until it shall have developed the ability to
absorb and make use of its own external sources of food material. So that,
finally, every study of plant chemistry must take into consideration the
stored food material and the germinative process whereby this becomes
available to the new organism of the next generation. Also, the chemistry
of fertilization of the ovum, so that a new embryo will be produced, and
the other stimuli which serve to induce the growth phenomena, must be
brought under observation and study.

A further step in the development of biological science has been to
separate the study of living things into the two sciences of botany and
zoology. From the standpoint of the chemistry of the processes involved
this segregation is unfortunate. It has resulted in the devotion of most of
the study which has been given to life processes and living things to
animal chemistry, or "physiological chemistry." As a consequence,
biochemistry, which deals with the living processes of both plants and
animals, is yet in its infancy; while phytochemistry is almost a new
science, yet its relation to the study of plants can scarcely be