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This work deals with the old question of the difference between the living and the non-living, and endeavors to define a specific test which will invariably show whether a particular substance belongs to one or the other class. The most recent effort to solve this problem is that of the English physiologist Waller, who bases his distinction upon what he terms the “blaze current.” For example, if a single induction shock is sent through a living pea by a current which has a galvanometer in circuit, there will be shown, following the shock, a remarkable outburst of electromotor force which Waller has called the blaze current. This he thinks is a universal phenomenon of life, except that he has not been able always to find it, particularly in certain sea algae, although here he thinks that it probably exists but does not show because the salts of the sea water close the current through the tissue rather than through the galvanometer.
The author believes that he has found a more universal and dependable sign of life in the always existing chemical change which is going on and which is liberating as a result carbon dioxide. The effort to detect carbon dioxide as a sign of living things has been tried before, but has often failed because the means used would not detect sufficiently minute particles. The author has elaborated an instrument which he calls a “biometer” which is sufficiently delicate to detect one ten