Note 417 — Chapter IX · ON CONCRETIONS, SPICULES, AND SPICULAR SKELETONS

In accordance with Emil Fischer’s conception of “asymmetric synthesis,” it is now held to be more likely that the process is synthetic than analytic: more likely, that is to say, that the plant builds up from the first one asymmetric body to the exclusion of the other, than that it “selects” or “picks out” (as Japp supposed) the right-handed or the left-handed molecules from an original, optically inactive, mixture of the two; cf. A. McKenzie, Studies in Asymmetric Synthesis, Journ. Chem. Soc. (Trans.), LXXXV, p. 1249, 1904.