1899] A PONTIFICAL PLANT 393 
Vaticana Alessandro Volta’ in honour of Volta. A few days ago His 
Holiness made an inspection of these plants, and the employées of the 
Vatican Gardens were presented to him by the Chief.” 
Neptuneopsis. 
THE opinion is not infrequently expressed that it is hopeless now to 
expect novelties among the larger mollusca, and certainly the great 
majority of new species recently described have been of small dimen- 
sions. Now, however, as if to show how far from exhausted are the 
riches of the sea, we have a handsome gastropod with a shell over 16 
em. in length from comparatively shallow water (33 fathoms) off the 
Cape of Good Hope. It constitutes a new genus, to which the name 
Neptuneopsis has been given by Mr. G. B. Sowerby, and it has been 
placed in the family Volutidae, though it seems to have relationships 
also with the Buccinidae, Fusidae, and Cancellariidae. Perhaps, how- 
ever, the greatest mystery regarding this new shell is that its 
publication (with a handsome coloured plate) has been undertaken by 
the Department of Agriculture of Cape Colony. 
A Note on Inheritance. 
“Until recently,” says Professor Jacques Loeb, “heredity has been 
treated chiefly as a problem for whose solution one single theory or one 
single principle was considered possible and sufficient.” Various 
theories have been propounded, but none have been generally accepted. 
“They overlook the fact that heredity is a collective term for a series 
of heterogeneous circumstances which cannot possibly be explained by 
one principle.” A more analytical study “has led to the conception 
that very different circumstances determine the various details in 
heredity,” and the author gives the results of one of his studies 
prompted by this conception (iol. Lectures Wood's Holl for 1898, pp. 
227-234, 6 figs.). ' 
But before we report on this, may we suggest that it would be 
clearer to agree that heredity is the most convenient term for the 
relation between successive generations, for then it is self-evident that 
there are several quite distinct problems to be faced. There is the 
question of the material basis of inheritance, whether in germ-cell or 
bud or otherwise ; there is the question as to how this material basis 
has come to be what it is—capable of reproducing an organism more or 
less like the parent; there is the detailed comparison of one generation 
with another, and the attempt to distinguish how far the resemblances 
