LT.NXEAN SOCIETY OF LOXDOX. ip 



]\ray lOtl), 192:5. 



Dr. A. Smith AVoodwaeu, E.E.S., President, 

 in the Chair. 



The Minutes of the General Meetinj? of the 3rd May, 1923, 

 were read and confirmed. 



Mr. William Plane Pycraft was admitted a Fellow. 



Certificates in favour of Miss Margery Knight, Miss Joan 

 Beauchamp Procter, F.Z.S., Eev. William Charles 'I'ippett, William 

 Fawcett, B.iSc., Charles Carmichael Arthur INIonro, and Thomas 

 Francis Egan were read for the second time. 



Prof. Naliui Mohan Mukerjee, M.Sc, Mr. Basaut Lai Gupta, 

 M.Sc, and Lilian Alice Mabel, Lady Eichraond-Brown were pro- 

 posed as Fellows. 



The President announced that a vacancy in the list of Associates 

 was created by the death of William Henry Pearson. 



Letters were read from Dr. John Isaac Briquet and Mr. 

 William Barclay thanking the Society for their election as 

 Foreign Member and Associate respectively. 



Dr. Paul Kammeber, of Vienna, delivered a lecture on " Breed- 

 ing Experiments on the Inheritance of Acquired Characters," of 

 which the following is an abstract; it was illustrated b}^ lantern- 

 slides, specimens, and preparations under the microscope. [Note. — 

 The same lecture was printed in extenso in 'Nature,' 12 May, 

 1923, pp. 037-40.] 



In 19U9 Dr. Kammerer ascertained that Sala-mandra atrn and 

 S. maculosa can be bred to interchange their accustomed repro- 

 ductive cliaracters. If young specimens of S. maculosa are kept 

 on a black background they lose much of their yellow markings 

 and appear mainly black ; their offspring if similarly treated show 

 a row of small spots in the middle line of the back; if however, 

 these last are reared on a yellow background, these spots fuse to 

 a longitudinal stripe. 



The yellow markings of the parent generation reared in yellow 

 surroundings increase at the expense of the black colour ; and their 

 descendants, kept in like manner, show yellow in wide bilateral 

 stripes. In the Vienna woods whence he procured his Salamanders, 

 only typically marked specimens occurred, though the striped form 

 (forma tceniata) is also found in the open. In later experiments 



c2 



