Nov. 7, 18S9] 



NATURE 



the phenomena of karyokinesis and their relation to fer- 

 tiUzation will be reckoned hereafter as one of the most, if 

 not the most, important of the biological discoveries of 

 the past twenty years. 



Apart from Darwinism, the most remarkable deve- 

 lopment of biological studies during these "twice ten 

 tedious years " is undoubtedly the sudden rise and 

 gigantic progress of our knowledge of the Bacteria. 

 Though the foundations were laid fifty years ago by 

 Schwann and Henle, and great advances were made 

 by Pasteur and by Lister just before our period, yet 

 it is within this span that the microscope and precise 

 methods of culture have been applied to the study of the 

 "" vibrions," or " microbes," and the so-called " bacterio- 

 logy " established. We now know, through the labours 

 of Toussaint, Chauveau, Pasteur, and Koch, of a num- 

 ber of diseases which are definitely caused by Bac- 

 teria. We also have learnt from Pasteur how to control 

 the attack of some of these dangerous parasites. Within 

 these twenty years the antiseptic surgery founded by 

 Sir Joseph Lister has received its full measure of 

 trial and confirmation, whilst his opportunities and 

 those of his fellow-countrymen for making further dis- 

 covery of a like kind have been ignorantly destroyed by 

 an Act of Parliament. 



To particularize some of the more striking zoological 

 discoveries which come within our twenty years, we may 

 cite— the Dipnoous fish-like creature Ccratodus of the 

 Queensland rivers, discovered by Krefft ; the jumping 

 wheel-animalcule Pedalion, of Hudson ; the development 

 and the anatomy of the archaic Arthropod Peripatus 

 worked out by Moseley, Balfour, and Sedgwick ; the 

 Hydrocorallinae of Moseley, an entirely new group of 

 compound animals ; the fresh-water jelly-fish Limiio- 

 codium of the Regent's Park lily-tank ; the Silurian 

 scorpion of Gotland and Lanarkshire ; the protozoon 

 Chlamydomyxa discovered by Archer in the Irish bogs ; 

 the Odontornithes and the Dinocerata of the American 

 palaeontologists ; the intracellular digestion obtaining 

 in animals higher than Protozoa, and the significance of 

 the " diapedesis "of blood-corpuscles in inflammation, and 

 the general theory of phagocytes due to Mecznikow ; the 

 establishment of the principle of degeneration as of equal 

 generality with that of progressive development, by Anton 

 Uohrn ; the demonstration by Weismann and others that 

 we have no right to mix our Darwinism with Larmarckism, 

 since no one has been able to bring forward a single case 

 of the transmission of acquired characters. Perhaps the 

 attempt to purify the Darwinian doctrine from Lamarckian 

 assumption will hereafter be regarded — whether it be 

 successful or not — as the most characteristic feature of 

 biological movement at the end of our double decade 

 Its earlier portion was distinguished by the f ub'.ication 

 of some of Darwin's later works. Its greatest event was 

 his death. 



In botany, twenty years ago, the teaching in our Uni- 

 versities was practically sterile. In one of our earliest 

 numbers, Prof. James Stewart defended with some vigour 

 the propriety of intrusting botany to a lecturer at Cam- 

 bridge who was also charged with the duty of lecturing 

 on electricity and magnetism. It is startling to compare 

 a past, in which botany was regarded as a subject which 

 might be tacked on anywhere, with its present condition, 

 in which there is scarcely a seat of learning in the 

 three kingdoms which is not turning out serious work. 

 The younger English school would be ungrateful if it 

 did not acknowledge its debt to the eminent German 

 teachers from whom it has derived so much in the 

 tradition and method of investigation. Sachs and De 

 Bary have left an indelible mark on our younger 

 Professors. But it would be a mistake to suppose 

 that English modern botany has simply derived from 

 Germany. It has developed a character of its own, in 

 which the indirect influence of Darwin's later work can 

 be not indistinctly traced. There has been a gradual re- 

 volt in England, the ultimate consequences of which have 

 still to be developed, against the too physical conception 

 of the phenomena of plant life which has been prevalent 

 on the Continent. Darwin, by his researches on insecti- 

 vorous plants and plant movements from a purely bio- 

 logical point of view, prepared the way for this ; Gar- 

 diner followed with a masterly demonstration of the 

 physical continuity of protoplasm in plant tissues. This 

 has thrown a new light on the phenomena studied by 

 Darwin, and we need not, therefore, be surprised that 

 his son, F. Darwin, has started what is virtually a new 

 conception of the process of growth, by showing that its 

 controlling element is to be sought in the living proto- 

 plasm of the cell, rather than in the investing cell-wall. 

 On the whole, English botanists have shown a marked 

 disposition to see in the study of protoplasm the real key 

 to the interpretation of the phenomena of plant life. The 

 complete analogy between the processes of secretion in 

 animals and vegetables, established by Gardiner, and the 

 essential part played by ferments in vegetable nutrition, 

 illustrated by Green, are examples of the results of this 

 line of inquiry. To Germany we owe a flood of informa- 

 tion as to the function of the cell-nucleus, which it is 

 singular has met with general acceptance but little 

 detailed corroboration in this country. 



In morphology a review would be ineffective which did 

 not go somewhat deeply into detail. The splendid hypo- 

 thesis of Schwendener, of the composite nature of lichens 

 as a commensal union of Algte and Fungi, has gradually 

 won its way into acceptance. In England there is little 

 of the first rank which calls for note except the re- 

 searches of Bower on the production of sexual organs on 

 the leafy plant in ferns without the intervention of an 

 intermediate generation. 



In vegetable physiology there seems a pause ; the 



