1898] NOTES AND COMMENTS 221 
subject would be ””—not only for Sir William Crookes—“ an act of 
cowardice.” 
STEREOCHEMISTRY AND VITALISM 
In connection with the above remarks, it is interesting to note that 
the Presidents of the Sections for Mathematical and Physical 
Science and Chemistry—Professors Ayrton and Japp—dealt with 
subjects which might equally well have been considered in the 
Biological Sections, while the President of the Zoological Section 
applied to certain biological problems the methods of mathematics. 
Professor Ayrton described certain interesting experiments on the 
smells of substances. Professor Japp considered certain facts of 
stereochemistry in their relation to the fundamental problem of life. 
He pointed out that all inorganic compounds were symmetric, and 
that the forces producing them were either symmetric, or, if asym- 
metric, then asymmetric in two opposite senses. Compounds of 
one-sided asymmetry originate with the living world, and are only 
known to be produced by some selection in which living organisms 
must directly or indirectly take part. It is of course possible that 
some day the isolation of asymmetric compounds may be proved 
possible without the intervention of even the directing intelligence 
of the chemist in his laboratory. Professor Armstrong, who spoke 
after the address, evidently thought that this would be proved before 
the next meeting of the British Association in Bristol. We are as yet 
only on the threshold of the problem, and fresh methods of investi- 
gation or fresh conceptions may upset the prophecies of to-day. 
For the present, however, Professor Japp has done good service in 
setting before us one of the difficulties to be overcome before the 
vitalistic hypothesis can be rejected. 
THE NEED OF NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION IN BIOLOGY 
PROFESSOR WELDON, choosing a subject which the ordinary naturalist 
is apt to consider abstruse and uninviting, succeeded in delivering 
an address that both for content and exposition was one of the 
successes of the meeting. Entitled, “Some objections to the theory 
of Natural Selection,” it was in the main an attempt to expound to 
biologists the modern doctrine of chance, and to show that the 
variations which actually occur in the animal world are neither 
more nor less definite than those which result in the tossing of 
ha’pence or the casting of dice; further, that these ‘chance varia- 
tions’ do afford scope for the action of Natural Selection in a way 
that admits of accurate measurement. The instance taken was the 
variation in frontal breadth of Carcinws maenas from a particular 
patch of beach in Plymouth between 1893 and 1898. It was 
shown that the frontal breadth was diminishing at a rapid rate in 
this particular race, and evidence was adduced to prove that this 
