Feb. 1902.] BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF EDINBUEGII 1G9 



note by the Eev. Dr. Stevenson, of Glamis, on this fungus. 

 It is there mentioned that this remarkably rare fungus 

 was only twice found on the Continent, and not in England 

 since February 1790. I may say that I found this fungus 

 in two stations in Kells Parish, and twice in the neighbour- 

 ing parishes. It grows on dead willows. I have seen no 

 record of any other one finding it. 



Functional Inertia — -A Froperty of Protoplasm. By 

 David Fraser Harris, B.Sc. (Lond.), M.D., Lecturer on 

 Physiology and Histology in the University of St. Andrews. 



(Read 13th February 1902.) 



I. Just as "dead" matter has two forms of inertia — that 

 of rest (mass) and that of motion (momentum), so too, 

 I think, has living matter (protoplasm, whether animal 

 or vegetable). It is owing to the inertia of matter at 

 rest that the heavy gate, swung on even almost frictionless 

 hmges, cannot be instantaneously set in motion, and, when 

 it has been set swinsiina;, it is owing to its inertia of 

 motion (momentum) that it continues to swing for some 

 time after we have ceased to push it. Now, I think, 

 protoplasm has a functional inertia — that property of 

 remaining in the status quo ante for a longer or shorter 

 time according to the function considered, that property of 

 continuing to act as it has been acting, in spite of the 

 application of a stimulus tending to effect a change of 

 action, and that power of continuing to exhibit the 

 phenomena it has been exhibiting after even the death 

 of the organism of which it is a constituent. The inertia 

 of protoplasm is, then, the capacity for remaining in the 

 functional statiis quo ante. This inertia of "livingness" 

 expresses itself under several different modes or categories 

 — bio-chemically, as "latent period," as "refractory period" 

 (physiological insusceptibility), rhythmically, or as accom- 

 panied by a conscious correlate, according as we study the 

 manifestations of the livingness from the standpoints 

 respectively of chemical change, time-relation to stimulus, 

 affectability, alternation of metabolic phase, or finally 

 consciousness. Livingness is, from the bio-chemic^l stand- 



TRANS. BOT. SOC. EDIN. VOL. XXII. M 



