Introductory remarks by the honorary president of the section.

s Decennial Index (1937—1946), references to polysaccharide chemistry covered 2 pages, i.e., about 480 references. References to starch covered five pages (1200 references), and those to cellulose and its derivatives, 20 pages (4800 references). A total of 6480 references, including patents, in a ten year period. During 1947—1956 references to polysaccharides covered 6 pages, i.e. 1360 references, and the total number of references to cellulose and its derivatives, starch and polysaccharides was 10 640. During the period 1957—1961 (5 years) the references have doubled to about 9360 including 1680 on polysaccharides (many on muco-polysaccharides). This is an average of 2000 references per year, nearly six a day. The increase was due, in part, to the growing interest of biologists and biochemists in polysaccharide chemistry and to the growth of science in the U.S.S.R. and Japan. Who can hope to read all of these publications, even if only in abstract, and still get some bench work done? It will be noted that I have not included the nucleic acids, although they could also be considered as polysaccharide derivatives. One of E. L. Hirst's interests was in the biological origin of the sugars. A hypothesis advanced was that pentoses resulted from hexuronic acids by decarboxylation. To test this hypothesis he decided to examine the structures of complex polymers which were built up of pentose, uronic acid and hexose residues. This was the beginning of a systematic chemical analysis of gums, mucilages and pectins. It soon became clear that the available methods, for a quantitative analysis of the methylated sugars resulting from hydrolysis of a methylated polymer, were inadequate.