64 PKOCEEDINGS OF THE MALACOLOGICAL SOCIETT. 



African Lake Fauna. In this department of labour, however, 

 interest for the session 1895-96 again centres in America. On the 

 Illinois River, a hundred miles west of that city, there is now afloat, 

 midst most picturesque surroundings, a laboratory affording accom- 

 modation for sixteen workers. Under Dr. C. A. Kofoid, as superin- 

 tendent, and the University of Illinois, an efficient body of working 

 biologists and chemists, with an artist, have been brought together. 

 The institution has been primarily established for research by its own 

 stuff, but during the months of June, July, and August, competent 

 investigators will be welcomed on easy terms ; and, following the 

 example set at Wood's HoU by Professor "Whitman and his col- 

 leagues, it is expected that the membership of the station will be 

 organized as a biological club, to hold stated meetings for conference, 

 discussion, and occasional lectures. 



The foregoing, however, is not all, for there is something significant 

 in the words " Biological Experiment Station," applied to this floating 

 Laboratory. One of the latest phases in post-Darwinian activity 

 among Biologists has been the development of what Yves Delage has 

 termed' the science of " Biomecanique." 



Modern speculation upon heredity and other far-reaching problems 

 in Biology has brought us, througli the researches of Driesch, Herbst, 

 lloux, Hertwig, Wilson, and others, to the application of experimental 

 methods to the study of life The descriptive method is now being 

 supplemented by these ; but do not let us fall into error as to what it 

 is that is being attempted. The physicist and chemist taunt us with 

 charges of inexactitude, and draw distinctions between theirs the 

 "exact" and ours the "inexact" sciences. They overlook the fact 

 that with organic matter it is impossible to remove for direct purposes 

 of experiment this or that factor at will, as is customary with ex- 

 periment upon the inanimate. Whereas they are dealing with 

 inanimate elements and bodies of known or determinable composition, 

 it is ours to deal with an animate compound at present indeterminable. 

 By the so-called experimental method in Biology, it is possible only 

 to institute changed conditions, and to observe the effects thereupon 

 produced. It is daily becoming more and more evident that the 

 moment we come into contact with living protoplasm (the "primordial 

 utricle " of the earlier vegetable histologists), analogy to the inanimate, 

 as involving chemical and physical processes, largely ceases. The time- 

 honoured analogies between the parts of the animate body and the 

 inanimate machine must be discarded as mischievous ; and as to what 

 is going on in the actual performance of what we term "vital 

 activities," we are at present only able to judge by a process of close 

 reasoning. Far be it from me, however, to depreciate the value of 

 either the "statistical" or "experimental" methods, as now being 

 applied to the study of vital phenomena. The work has to be done, 

 come what may ; and I am rather lost in admiration of the pluck of 

 those who dare face conditions so complex and changeable — compass, 

 thermometer, re-agent bottle, test-tube, scalpel, or needle, in hand. 



' Yves Delage, Eev. gen. sci. pures et appliq., 6<^ Aim., No. x, Paris, 1895. 



