94 NOTES AND COMMENTS [august 



then his ready grasp of difficult problems, and lastly, the power of 

 turning to account the waste observations, failures, and even the 

 blunders of his predecessors in whatever subject of inquiry." As is 

 well known, Darwin was wont to attribute his success to industry 

 rather than to ability. " It is dogged that does it " was an expression 

 he often made use of. He attributed his results to " the love of science 

 — unbounded patience in long reflecting over many subjects — industry 

 in observing facts, and a fair share of invention as well as of common 

 sense." This is a famously modest self-estimate, but its psychological 

 justice may be doubted, and it seems to us important to notice Sir 

 Joseph Hooker's opinion. " In this retrospect he has, if my judgment 

 is correct, greatly undervalued invention, that is originality or that 

 outcome of the exercise of the imagination which is so conspicuous in 

 every experiment he made or controlled, or in the genesis of every 

 new fact or idea that he first brought to light." Truly it was fell 

 doggedness. 



Dispersal of Seeds. 



Among many interesting notes in Mr. Clement Eeid's " Origin of the 

 British Flora " is a table of modes of dispersal of seeds, which may be 

 quoted as follows : — Minute seeds readily moved by accidents of all 

 sorts ; those eaten or dropped by birds, most of which are destroyed 

 while some remain uninjured ; seeds passed in an uninjured state by 

 mammals or birds ; those transported by wind ; those which cling to 

 feathers or fur {e.g. in the cakes of mud which adhere to the flanks of 

 oxen) ; those transported by water ; those plants of which broken 

 pieces grow, such fragments being carried on the legs of wading birds 

 often to great distances. With regard to the transportation by water 

 an interesting observation has reached us from Mull and Iona. It is 

 said that thousands of apple seeds have taken root on those islands, 

 the result of dispersal from the wrecked liner " Labrador." Mr. Eeid 

 mentions an interesting case of a dead wood-pigeon found by him in a 

 chalk pit ; its crop was full of broad-beans, all of which were growing 

 well, though under ordinary circumstances they would have been 

 eventually digested. As he says — " A pigeon would easily cross the 

 Strait of Dover in half an hour, and in the clays when raptorial birds 

 and wild cats were plentiful many pigeons must have been struck 

 down with their last meal undigested." 



Reformed Nomenclature ! 



Prof. Herkera emphasizes the impossibility of recognising organisms 

 by their names under the present complicated system of nomenclature 



