NuTES AND COMMKNT. 10.^ 



to bacteria, "not to fungi, not to uiyxoymcetes, not to mites, 

 not to frosts, not to disturbances in nutrition." Artificial cross 

 innoculation has been successfully performed on a great \ariety 

 of plants belonging to such widely separated families as Com- 

 positae and vSalicaceae. The hope expressed by the writer " that 

 in these plant tumors, now so easily producable b\- a definite 

 microorganism, we possess means of determining the cause of 

 cell division and possibly of shedding some light on the origin ai 

 certain malignant animals tumor," is one that will be shared by 

 all who grasp the far-reaching importance of such an outcome. 



Correlation of the results and generalizations in two con- 

 tiguous sciences is a matter of great importance. When accom- 

 plished in the proper manner, it greatly broadens the usefulness 

 of knowledge in both lines. When a scientist seeks to project 

 the principles of his ow n specialty into a related branch, however, 

 many pitfalls await him. He is more than likel> to accept the 

 fading generalizations and hackneyed statements of the sister 

 science as the measure of its progress. 



This is well exemplified in the address, "A Universal Law," 

 given by Professor Bancroft before the American Chemical 

 Society at Minneapolis recently {Science, Vol. 33, p. 179 



Professor Bancroft says: "The view of the biologists seems 

 to be that each generation always varies spontaneouslv from the 

 preceding one to a greater or lesser extent, and that these varia- 

 tions are reproduced more or less completely in the succeeding 

 generation. By the survival of the fittest we eventually get a 

 race which is better adapted to the local conditions than the one 

 from which Ave started.*' 



This version of unmodified natural selection as first formu- 

 lated by Darwin does not represent the prevailing views of the 

 subject among botanists and is not held by any modern worker — 

 certainly not by any experimentalist. 



In the next paragraph, Professor Bancroft, as the result of 

 the adduction of principles formulated in chemistry, says: 

 "The view that I have outlined is that the external conditions 

 tend to produce such changes in the organism that the next 

 generation varies in such a way as to be more adapted to local 

 conditions. Bv the survival of the fittest and bv the continued 



