There has been a repetition this year (1912) of the usual misrepresentation on the occasion of the meeting of the British Association. The President, Professor Schaefer, had let it be known that his address would be concerned with the chemistry of living processes, the gradual passage of chemical combinations into the condition which we call "living," and the possibility of bringing about this passage in the chemical laboratory without the use of materials already elaborated by previously existing "living" material. The announcement was immediately made in some "newspapers" that "startling revelations" were to be made by the President, that he was "to throw a bomb-shell" into the camp, etc. He did nothing of the kind. He gave an admirable and clear statement of the progress during recent years towards the realisation of the construction in the laboratory by chemical methods of the complex chemical combination which exhibits those "activities"--essentially movements, unions, disruptions and re-unions of extremely minute particles--which we call "living." The conclusion that such a gradual building up has taken place in past ages of the history of our earth was formulated more than forty years ago by Spencer, Tyndall, Huxley, Haeckel, and others, and has not been seriously attacked in the interval, but, on the contrary, generally accepted as a legitimate inference from the facts ascertained and the theory of the evolution or gradual development of what we call the material universe. Professor Schaefer expressed the opinion, anticipated and shared by many other investigators, that the progress of chemical experiment renders it probable that further steps, culminating in the successful construction of "living" matter in the laboratory, are not beset by any insurmountable obstacles and will sooner or later be accomplished. There was no "bomb-shell" in this statement, and no excitement as its result among scientific workers nor amongst those who do not neglect to study the writings of the "interpreters" desired by Lord Justice Moulton. There are still some such interpreters carrying on the work of Huxley and of Tyndall, those great interpreters whose writings should be studied and treasured as classics.