384 NOTES AND COMMENTS [DECEMBER 
chemical history of an annual plant from germination to death, in 
connection with which the author recognises the enthusiastic work of 
his colleague, Mr. G. André. The third volume consists of special 
researches on the chemistry of plants, the distribution of particular 
elements, the alleged formation and distribution of nitrates in plants, the 
formation of oxalic acid and carbonates, the process of respiration, and so 
on. The fourth volume has mainly to do with the soil, the chemical 
nature of humus, and the physiological value of the various mineral sub- 
stances. It concludes with an account of the author’s numerous researches 
on the chemistry of wine. Many of the illustrious chemist’s results are 
familiar through previous publication, and have been met with no 
small amount of criticism ; it is all the more important that we should 
now have them in collected form and in detailed expression, which 
enables us to see more clearly the unequal strength of the evidence on 
which the several conclusions rest. As the record of a great work 
persistently prosecuted for many years and justified by many results 
of practical and theoretical importance, the book must command the 
admiration and respect of all. 
Floreat Wood’s Holl. 
Every biologist who is still young enough to be enthusiastic, looks 
with eagerness about this time of year for the arrival of the volume of 
“ Biological Lectures” from the Marine Biological Laboratory, Wood’s 
Holl, Mass. The volume for 1898 (Boston: Ginn and Co., 1899, 
pp. 343) has just arrived, in good time for the Christmas holidays, 
when one can enjoy its stimuli with a less preoccupied mind. One 
cannot help feeling that the intellectual atmosphere of Wood’s Holl 
must be bracing, the lectures are so vigorous. 
The volume begins with a lecture by Professor E. B. Wilson on 
the structure of protoplasm, which we have already noticed. “The 
evidence indicates that alveolar, granular, fibrillar, and reticular struc- 
tures are all of secondary origin and importance, and that the ultimate 
background of protoplasmic activity is the sensibly homogeneous matrix 
or continuous substance in which those structures appear.” Wilson is 
also the author of the second lecture on cell-lineage and ancestral 
reminiscence—a strong plea for the acceptance of cell-homology. The 
third lecture on “adaptation in cleavage” is by Frank R. Lillie, who 
seeks to show that the special features of the cleavage in each species 
are as definitely adapted to the needs of the future larva as the latter 
is to the actual conditions of its environment. Professor E. G. Conklin 
discusses in the fourth lecture protoplasmic movement as a factor in 
differentiation, showing how delusive it is to consider the cell as if it 
were merely static, since movements of the cytoplasm play a very im- 
