It is important to learn what fundamental properties of protoplasm are responsible for its electrical behavior. Progress in this field evidently depends on advances in physical chemistry and their use in biology.Experiments on cells which are especially suitable for such studies show that they possess the properties of an aqueous system covered by a thin layer of non-aqueous material which is the chief seat of the electrical potentials. This material is present in exceedingly smaU amounts so that we can hardly hope to obtain enough for analysis. Failing this we may try to find models which act like the living cell. Much has been learned in this way.A useful substance for this purpose is gualacol which acts like certain protoplasmic surfaces in various ways, such as the following: x 1. It allows water to pass freely: it admits inorganic electrolytes and to a still greater extent certain "lipoid-soluble" substances.2. It is more permeable to potassium salts than to sodium salts and more permeable to chlorides than to sulfates.3. When it is shaken with 0.01 ~ NaC1 and placed in a U-tube with aqueous 0.1 ~ NaC1 on one side and aqueous 0.01 ~ NaC1 on the other the dilute solution is electrically positive in the external circuit. This indicates that the mobility of Na + (i.e., UNa) is greater than that of C1-(i.e., vcl). This applies also to KC1 and to the gualacolates of sodium and potassium (which will be called for convenience KG and NAG).4. When aqueous 0.1 ~ KC1 is placed on one side of gualacol (previously shaken with 0.1 ~r NaC1) and aqueous 0.1 ~ NaC1 is placed on the other the KC1 is negative in the external circuit ("potassium effect"). This indicates that ux is greater than U~a. This applies also to KG and NaG.The study of gualacol has especial interest because the role of diffusion potentials can be determined with considerable precision since Shedlovsky and Uhlig, * with the aid of the moving boundary measurements in gualacol made by Longsworth, have determined the mobilities in gualacol of K +, Na +, and the guaiacol ion together with dissociation constants and activities.1 Cf. Osterhout, W. J. V., Some models of protoplasmic surfaces, in Cold Spring Harbor symposia on quantitative biology, Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island