200 



The Journal of Heredity 



allowed to interfere with the sacredness 

 of Mr. Bell's solitude. He had his 

 time for solitude and his time for social 

 intercourse and the one was not per- 

 mitted to interfere with the other. 



HIS WEDNESDAY EVENINGS 



His Wednesday evenings of scientific 

 discussion w^hich he held for over 20 

 years at his Washington home will be 

 long remembered by all those who took 

 part in them, for they constituted 

 uniquely interesting gatherings of the 

 scientific men of the world where im- 

 portant discoveries and researches 

 were announced and discussed in a 

 delightfully informal manner. Through 

 these evenings he kept in touch with 

 the important men of his time and 

 gave pleasure and encouragement to 

 hundreds of scientific men. 



I remember as a boy reading of 

 the last hours of Napoleon and the last 

 words of Goethe and others, thinking 

 to catch some glimpse of that great 

 beyond, through these super-minds just 

 as thev fluttered on its brink. There 



has always attached somehow a strange 

 importance to the last words of a great 

 man, and I cannot close this imperfect 

 sketch of the personality of Alexander 

 Graham Bell without telling of the last 

 conversation I had with him on a 

 scientific subject, the night before his 

 death, while his mind was perfectly 

 clear. He complained of great lassitude 

 and seemed to have that same clear 

 conviction of what was coming in his 

 life that he always had regarding nat- 

 ural phenomena, and I suggested to 

 him in a question that possibly some- 

 thing had gone wrong with the electri- 

 cal mechanism of his body and then 

 inquired if he didn't think we were 

 electrical organisms anyway. He 

 shrugged his shoulders in an amused 

 way and answered with a favorite 

 phrase, "Je ne sais pas. Monsieur, Je ne 

 sais pas." 



And he has gone, passing as a wind 

 passes over the moorland on a starry 

 night, but there remain his discoveries, 

 his descendants, and the marvelous 

 memories which he has left in the lives 

 of his host of friends. 



I 



A New Edition of 



Genetics, An Introduction to the 

 Study of Heredity. By Herbert 

 Eugene Walter, Associate Pro- 

 fessor of Biology, Brown Univer- 

 sity. Revised Edition. 354 pages. 

 $2.25. The MacMillan Co., New 

 York, 1922. 



Since its first publication in 1915, 

 Professor Walter's Genetics has been 

 one of the most successful of the ele- 

 mentary text books on this subject. 

 It is a thoroughly readalile book, full 

 of the apt illustrations and side lights 

 which delight those who have the 



Walter's Genetics 



privilege of listening to Professor 

 Walter's lectures. In the revised 

 edition (1922) extensive changes have 

 been made in order to bring the subject 

 up to date. Three chapters have been 

 added which deal with recent discover- 

 ies in regard to linkage, the problem 

 of development and the determination 

 of sex, the last with the assistance of 

 Professor S. I. Kornhauser. Other 

 parts have been rewritten. It is a book 

 which can be recommended without 

 hesitation to the general reader. 



S. W. 



The German Genetics Association 



The Deutsche Gesellschaft fur V'er- 

 erbungswissenschaft held its annual 

 meeting in Vienna from the 25th to 

 the 27th of .September, 1922. The 

 meeting was arranged to follow im- 

 mediately after the exercises of the 

 Mendel centenary at Briinn, .Sept. 

 22-24. 



The three forenoons were given up 

 to discussions of the problem of muta- 



tion, led by R. Goldschmidt; artificial 

 changes in the mechanism of heredity, 

 led by H. Spemann; and the inheri- 

 tance of mental defects, led by E. 

 Rlidin. 



The general evening meeting was 

 devoted to an address by E. Baur on 

 "Methods and aims of genetics in 

 theory and practice." 



