b PllESIDENTS ADDRESS. 



of manufacture should not prevent the loss of thousands of tins 

 of milk. 



Turning to the work of the Linnean Macleay Fellows, Dr. 

 Petrie during the past year has completed his research on the 

 amount of aiginin, histidin, and lysin in fowl's egg-white. 

 During the process of separation of these bases, determinations 

 of the quantity of nitrogen were made at each stage of the estima- 

 tion. The figures obtained will be of value in showing the parts 

 of the process of separation which require improvement.* 



Since the conclusion of this research, Dr. Petrie has been 

 engaged on the application of the precipitin test to the 

 problem of the difi'erentiation of the vegetable species. The 

 valuable researches of Nuttall,! Graham-Smith and others have 

 shown that in the animal kingdom the relationships indicated by 

 the " biological method" are those which have been accepted on 

 the ground of morphological similarity. In the plant kingdom 

 it was thought that this method was unlikely to be useful as the 

 early experiments of Kowarskiij: suggested no considerable differ- 

 ence in the proteins of plants. Employing an antiserum pre- 

 pared against extracts of the seeds of Acacia pycnantlia, it has 

 been found that no reaction is given with the extracts of the 

 seeds of any plant outside the Natural Order of the Leguminosse, 

 to which Acacia pycnantha belongs. Within the group of the 

 Leguminosse, extracts of some seeds react with the antiserum^ 

 while extracts of seeds of other species fail to react. The plants 

 which thus appear to be related to Acacia pycnaiitha according 

 to the biological method show so far no general morphological 

 similarity. It may be possible, if sufficient data be obtained, to 

 determine the value of morphological characters and to recognise 

 a natural grouping of plants. 



The attention of Mr. E. J. Goddard, Linnean M acleay Fellow 

 in Zoology, has been devoted to the Hirudinea, Oligochaeta, and 

 Polyzoa. The results of his study have appeared in one article 



* Chapman & Petrie, Journ. of Physiol., xxxix., 1909, p. 341. 



t Xuttall, Blood Immunity and Relationship. Cambridge. 1904. 



X Deutsch. med. Wochenschr, xxvii., 190'2, p. 448. 



