342 NOTES AND COMMENTS [may 



(Proc. Boy. Soc. lxiv. 1899, pp. 167, 168). The author has been led 

 to an unhesitating confirmation of the parasitic nature of both the 

 filaments and the bacteroids contained in the nodules. The filaments, 

 it was found, have no constant relation to the nucleus of the cells as 

 was represented by Beyerinck in 1888. The infection-tube which 

 orows into the root-hair consists of strands of straight rodlets, which 

 burst out here and there, and become transformed into X, V, and 

 Y-shaped bacteroids, incapable of further growth. As the rodlets 

 multiply by fission, the author refers them to the Schizomycetes, but 

 leaves it an open question whether the}'- are true bacteria. Commercial 

 nitragin does consist of the tubercle organism, as its advocates assert, 

 and as a result of the inoculation of either seeds or soil with it, tubercle 

 formation ensues. In the commercial product the organisms are 

 present as micrococcus-like bodies, all straight and immobile, which 

 become converted into bacteroids and straight rods in pea-extract. 

 The cautious practical conclusion is that the addition of nitragin to 

 soils rich in nitrates appears to be inadvisable, but a supply of it to 

 soil poor in nitrates results in an increased yield, though better results 

 are obtained if, instead of nitragin, nitrates be added to the soil. 



Classification of Variations. 



About a year ago, Professor G. Schwalbe delivered before the German 

 Anatomical Society an interesting address on the classification of 

 variations, which seems to have received but little attention in this 

 country. It is to be found in the Erganzungsheft to the fourteenth 

 volume of the Anatomischer Anzeiger, and well deserves the con- 

 sideration of evolutionists. With some of his categories of classification 

 all who have interested themselves in the subject of variation are 

 familiar, the distinctions between continuous and discontinuous, 

 substantive and meristic variations, and between blastogenic or germinal 

 variations and somatogenic modifications ; but there is at the end of 

 the address a contrast which we do not remember to have seen so 

 clearly put before. It is that between those variations which may 

 be described as due to incompleteness in the inheritance, and 

 those which cannot be so described, being distinctly " new departures," 

 possibly due to the influence exerted on the germ-plasm by environ- 

 mental stimuli, either directly or by changes evoked in the metabolism 

 of the body. 



Local Colour in Universities. 



We referred some months ago to Mr. Chamberlain's wise remark at 

 Birmingham that universities should have local colour, that they should 



