176 THE AMERICAN MONTHLY [September, 



EDITORIAL COMMENT. 



By henry L. OSBORN, 



HAMLINE, MINN. 



The new Marine Biological Laboratory at Wood's Holl, Mass., to 

 which reference was made in the July number, has had a satisfactory attend- 

 ance for the first season, and promises, from the responses of colleges and 

 students, to be well attended hereafter. It provides a building well adapted 

 to the requirements of either beginners or investigators; microscopes, well- 

 lighted work-tables, boats, nets, dredges, etc., so that one can find all the 

 necessaries for a month or two of summer study. 



o 



The British Association met this year at Bath, under the pi"esidency of 

 Sir Frederic Bramwell. Mr. Thystleton Dyer presided over the sub-section 

 of Biology. One subject set for a discussion, to be led by Dr. T. J. Hickson, 

 w^as coral-reefs, on which much has recentl}^ been written in Natui'e. Are- 

 port was expected by a committee appointed to investigate the effects upon 

 the human body of various mechanical occupations. This report was prob- 

 ably of very great interest, because the committee sought to ascertain the ef- 

 fect of constant uses of various organs and the disuse of other parts by very 

 careful quantitative experiments. 



o 



Meaning of varieties and species. — Prof. H. W. Conn, in a late num- 

 ber of Science (May 25, rSSS), calls the attention of naturalists to the im- 

 portant question of the definition of species, and in particular to the suggestion 

 of Romanes in his article on Physiological Selection {JVatare, August, rSS6), 

 and claims that the matter has not received the attention which it deserves. 

 The point added by Romanes to Darwin's own theory gives to varieties and 

 species a peculiar significance not hinted at by Darwin himself. It is that 

 ' varieties are forms in which variations of structure have been selected nat- 

 urally or artificially and propagated by inheritance ; and further, that these 

 variations are those of any part of the physical organism, save only the gen- 

 erative system, while species are forms in which modifications of the gener- 

 ative system have been inherited with or without accompanying variations in 

 other organs.' In support of this theory we find that some species differ 

 scarcely any in the more obvious characters of skin-marking, proportion, col- 

 oring, etc., and yet are so unlike in their generative systems that the males 

 of one cannot fertilize ova of the other ; while varieties of external form 

 and proportion, color, etc., are perfectly feitile when crossed. Cases among 

 birds and insects are numerous and in other groups as well. The sugges- 

 tion, while it does not assign the cause, gives a valuable hint regarding the 

 direction in which it may be sought. It furnishes a clue to the explanation c! 

 the infertility of forms apparently much alike and of the intercrossir g 

 others apparently so unlike. Darwin regarded species as exaggerat ^ 

 rieties. By this hypothesis they are not such, but variations along oth' , 

 from varieties. It is quite as supposable that variations should occu ", 

 generative system as in any other, and at the same time it is true t 

 they would be very inconspicuous. 



o 



Scientific accuracy of statement cannot be demanded from eve; . , 



daily speech, but when one comes before the public should he not b^' ^ . 

 to be truthful? It is an offence in most parts of the United State? ., 

 the principles of orthography or syntax, to locate Heidelberg in L, '1 1 

 consider the Neva a range of mountains ; and one of no historica , . ^ 

 holds his peace or is rightly put to shame. And yet biological ' '■ 



