1899] A PONTIFICAL PLANT 393 



Vaticana Alessanclro Volta ' in honour of Volta. A few days ago His 

 Holiness made an inspection of these plants, and the employees of the 

 Vatican Gardens were presented to him by the Chief." 



Neptuneopsis. 



The opinion is not infrequently expressed that it is hopeless now to 

 expect novelties among the larger mollusca, and certainly the great 

 majority of new species recently described have been of small dimen- 

 sions. Now, however, as if to show how far from exhausted are the 

 riches of the sea, we have a handsome gastropod with a shell over 16 

 cm. in length from comparatively shallow water (33 fathoms) off the 

 Cape of Good Hope. It constitutes a new genus, to which the name 

 Neptuneopsis has been given by Mr. G. B. Sowerby, and it has been 

 placed in the family Volutidae, though it seems to have relationships 

 also with the Buccinidae, Fusidae, and Cancellariidae. Perhaps, how- 

 ever, the greatest mystery regarding this new shell is that its 

 publication (with a handsome coloured plate) has been undertaken by 

 the Department of Agriculture of Cape Colony. 



A Note on Inheritance. 



" Until recently," says Professor Jacques Loeb, " heredity has been 

 treated chiefly as a problem for whose solution one single theory or one 

 single principle was considered possible and sufficient." Various 

 theories have been propounded, but none have been generally accepted. 

 " They overlook the fact that heredity is a collective term for a series 

 of heterogeneous circumstances which cannot possibly be explained by 

 one principle." A more analytical study " has led to the conception 

 that very different circumstances determine the various details in 

 heredity," and the author gives the results of one of his studies 

 prompted by this conception {Biol. Lectures Wood's Hoi I for 1898, pp. 

 227-234, 6 figs.). 



But before we report on this, may we suggest that it would be 

 clearer to agree that heredity is the most convenient term for the 

 relation between successive generations, for then it is self-evident that 

 there are several quite distinct problems to be faced. There is the 

 question of the material basis of inheritance, whether in germ-cell or 

 bud or otherwise ; there is the question as to how this material basis 

 has come to be what it is — capable of reproducing an organism more or 

 less like the parent ; there is the detailed comparison of one generation 

 with another, and the attempt to distinguish how far the resemblances 



