1894. NOTES FROM THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 221 



which meets in the physiological laboratories of its members for the 

 precise purposes to which Professor Schaefer alluded. There are 

 subjects galore on which papers can be read and discussions raised 

 without the necessity of laboratory demonstrations. In many 

 respects, however, we cannot help regretting the breaking up of the 

 section of biology into separate sub-sections and sections. It 

 tends more and more to stamp the Association with that isolated 

 specialism which is inevitable in modern science, but which carries 

 with it great disadvantages. If the zoologists meet by themselves in 

 a zoological laboratory, the physiologists in a physiological, and the 

 botanists in a botanical, the odds are that the subjects they discuss 

 will be of a nature to be unintelligible or uninteresting to those of 

 another specialism. We imagine that a botanist or a zoologist would 

 gather little from those demonstrations of the methods of research in 

 a physiological laboratory which Dr. Schaefer advocated. What 

 we want at the meetings of the British Association is an increase of 

 organised discussions of subjects which lie on the borderland of the 

 different branches, and of the different branches of these branches. 



To take an example, one of the subjects of Dr. Schaefer's 

 address was recent discoveries about the cell, and specially about 

 the nucleus and the centrosome. Dealing with the researches upon 

 the centrosome of the physiologist Heidenhain, the President 

 described it as one of the obscure subjects of which, though 

 supremely important, physiology knew next to nothing. Now, in the 

 Biological Section, Professor Strasburger read a paper on the nucleus 

 and centrosome in plants, while Dr. Van Beneden discoursed on the 

 same topic from the point of view of a zoologist. Is not this a 

 lamentable instance of failure to take advantage of the opportunity 

 of joint discussion ? Very many similar subjects might be mentioned. 

 For instance, at the present time there are different and novel views 

 of the nature of heredity and of the structure of protoplasm pro- 

 pounded by botanists, physiologists, and zoologists. And elsewhere 

 in this article we allude to similar lack of concert on subjects of 

 Geographical Distribution and Darwinian Theory. We are certain 

 that well organised discussions of these held by biologists from all 

 the sub-sections of biology would prove not only of surpassing interest 

 but of great value. Although the physiologists do not intend to 

 meet as an independent section next year, yet the botanists promise 

 to carry on the evil. 



Natural Selection. 



The most interesting discussion in the Biological Section was 

 confined almost entirely to zoologists. Professor D'Arcy Thompson 

 boldly threw down his gauntlet by stating his doubts and difficulties 

 in accepting " Darwinism." He could not see how many forms and 

 colours of animal life were to be explained on the simple hypothesis 

 of Natural Selection, even assisted by Sexual Selection ; and he 

 instanced the brilliant colours of humming-birds and the logarithmic 



