ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY, MICROSCOPY, ETC. 259 



remarkable formation. The case was of the monoplegic type. In the 

 cells of the cervical ganglia, on the side corresponding to the affected 

 limb, there appeared rosette bodies staining deeply with iron-hsema- 

 toxylin. They are stained blue by the methods of Giemsa and Mallory. 

 A low magnification shows six or eight axially-disposed filaments sur- 

 rounded by a hyaline zone. High magnification shows that these fila- 

 ments consist of a large number of small spherical granules linked 

 together. The formation is placed in the ganglion cell, usually at 

 some distance from the nucleus. The author considers various possible 

 explanations, and regards as most probable the hypothesis that this is a 

 crystalloid formation in the ganglion cell, which only becomes visible on 

 account of the chromatolysis of the chromatophil substance of Nissl. 



Quekett Microscopical Club. — At the 471st Ordinary Meeting, held 

 ■on February 28, 1910, which was also the 45th Annual General Meeting, 

 the President, Professor E. A. Minchin, M.A., F.Z.S., delivered an address 

 on " Some Problems of Evolution in the Simplest Forms of Life." The 

 principal points dealt with were popular classifications of living things, 

 scientific methods to the same end, and the need in the latter case to 

 draw distinctions and institute comparisons undreamt of by the ordinary 

 person. The Microscope, relatively a thing of yesterday, is not yet 

 adequate for our needs, but is growing and daily becoming more effi- 

 cient. Different types of metabolism were observed in the Protista. In 

 some cases a Protist organism can be at one time a plant, at another an 

 animal. In Protista there are two well-marked types. One, more 

 primitive and in which chromatin occurs only in scattered granules, 

 "chrornidia." The second, higher and leading on to the ordinary plants 

 and animals, and in which the greater part of the chromatin is aggre- 

 gated into a nucleus, and which, further, has a distinct protoplasmic 

 zone— the cytoplasm. The first is the bacterial type, the second the 

 cellular type. The existence in all forms of higher life of sex and sex- 

 phenomena was then briefly dealt with. Sex-phenomena are also 

 observed in the cellular type of Protista. In the visible world of living 

 things it is found universally that organisms are divisible more or less 

 easily into groups which are termed " species." Some species are sharply 

 marked off from others, some are less so, but no one now considers a 

 species as a fixed and immutable entity. The fact, however, remains 

 that the tendency of living things to separate themselves into species 

 more or less distinct, is one of the most constant and universal peculiari- 

 ties of the organic world. In so far as the Protista are concerned it was 

 thought that syngamy was the bond which unites the individuals com- 

 prising a species and separates them from those of another, though closely 

 allied, species. Without syngamy a species would tend to break up into 

 distinct races or strains, either under the influence of environment or by 

 innate variations. Syngamy tends to reduce the individual differences 

 to a common level, by mixing together the characters of divergent strains. 

 It therefore follows that there are no true species amongst organisms of 

 the bacterial grade, if it be true that syngamy does not occur amongst 

 them, and the so-called species of bacteria are to be regarded as mere 

 strains capable of modification in any direction by environmental in- 

 fluences. From these considerations it was thought to be evident that 



