October 7, 1897 



NA rURE 



555 



ZOOLOGY AT THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 



JDV arrangement between the Organising Committees, the 

 presidents of the four biological sections gave their addresses 

 at different hours, so as to make it possible for members to 

 attend two or more. The address in Section D was given at 

 11.30 on Thursday, and followed Prof. Foster's address to the 

 Physiological Section. After the address in Section D, some of 

 the Reports of Committees were taken, and that of the Naples 

 Zoological Station was most appropriately followed by a short 

 statement, made by Dr. Anton Dohrn himself, as to the 

 Naples Marine Station and its work. Dr. Dohrn dwelt chiefly 

 upon his plans for the development of the station, how far they 

 had been realised, and what still remained to be done. Prof. 

 Ramsay Wright followed with a paper on a proposed lacustrine 

 biological station, in which he gave a preliminary account of the 

 microscopic fauna of the lakes of Ontario, pointed out the 

 bearing of such observations upon problems of pisciculture, and 

 the need of a biological station for the further study of the 

 animals and plants in the great lakes. As a result of this paper, 

 and of the discussion on the subject in Section D, towards the 

 end of the meeting a deputation of biologists, consisting of Lord 

 Lister, Prof. Ramsay Wright, Prof. Miall, Prof. Ilerdman, Prof. 

 Poulton, Mr. Iloyle, Prof. Prince, and others, were received by 

 the Hon. Mr. Hardie, Premier of Ontario, the Hon. Dr. Ross, 

 Minister of Education, the Treasurer, and other members of the 

 Cabinet, and spoke in favour of the establishment of a fresh- 

 water station by the Government on one of the numerous lakes 

 in the Algonquin National Park. The proposal was very 

 favourably received by the members of the Government present, 

 and the Committee of Section D appointed a Committee, with 

 a grant of 75/. for the purpose of assisting in the promotion of 

 the scheme. It may confidently be expected then that as the 

 result of this action in Section D a biological institution of 

 both scientific and practical importance will be permanently 

 established in the province of Ontario. 



None of the other reports of committees call for special atten- 

 tion, and the only remaining paper taken on Thursday was Prof 

 Minot's on the origin of vertebrata. This gave rise to con- 

 siderable discussion, in which Dr. Dohrn, Prof. Osborn, Dr. 

 Gaskell, Prof. T. Gill, and others took part 



Friday, August 20. — The Section opened at 10.30 with an 

 interesting description by Prof. Osborn, of the restoration of 

 Phenacodus prtiiurvus And of the skeletons and restorations of 

 Tertiary mammalia in the American Museum of Natural History 

 at New York. Prof. Osborn illustrated his remarks by a re- 

 markably fine series of large photographs of the actual 

 fossils and of their artistic restorations executed in water 

 colours by Mr. Charles Knight. Prof. Osborn has had the 

 famous skeleton of Pheiiacodus, originally described by Cope, 

 entirely remounted, with the result that he finds it to be as 

 digitigrade as the tapir, with the hind limbs more powerful 

 than the fore, the tail of great size and the head extremely 

 small. Prof. Herdman then gave an address upon oysters and 

 the oyster question, illustrated by lantern slides, in which he 

 dealt with oyster culture, the connection between oysters and 

 disease, the presence of copper in some oysters, and the nature 

 of the various kinds of greenness which occur in certain oysters. 

 Prof. H. V. Osborn then gave a paper on the origin of mammalia, 

 in which he discus.sed the evidence as to primitive lines of 

 descent afibrded by American Tertiary mammals. He showed 

 that probably none of the forms up to now made known, ought 

 to be regarded as the original stock of the mammalia. The 

 rest of the papers taken on that forenoon dealt with detailed 

 questions of fishes and fisheries, and were : — Prof Prince's de- 

 scription of specimens of sea trout, capelin, and sturgeon from 

 Hudson Bay, and the Esocidie of Canada with description of a 

 new species of pike found in Ontario, Dr. P. Cox's recent 

 additions to the fish fauna of New Brunswick, and Dr. Carl 

 Eigenmann's interesting exhibition of the blind fishes of America 

 in a living state. 



The Section opened in the afternoon with a paper by Prof. V.. 

 B. Poulton, illu.strated by the lantern, upon " theories of mimicry 

 as illustrated by African butterflies." He showed how various 

 distinct forms with offensive characteristics and warning colours 

 tend to converge in appearance, so as to share the responsibility 

 of keeping up their character and spread the inevitable loss over 

 a greater number. This was made known by Bates and F. Muller 

 for South American forms, and by Moore for Indian, and now 

 Poulton completes the case by evidence derived from African 



butterflies. There were two papers by Mr. A. Halkett, the one 

 on Branchipus slagnalis, and the other on large specimens of 

 UnionidjE from Lake Huron. 



Two papers were given on the surface plankton of the 

 Atlantic, one on this afternoon by Mr. W. Garstang, the 

 other on Tuesday morning by Prof. Herdman. Mr. Gar- 

 stang had collected his material on board the steamer Lau- 

 rentian by tying a fine net over the bath tap and running 

 the water through it occasionally during the day ; Prof. Herd- 

 man had worked on the steamer Parisian by using four 

 silk nets of different degrees of fineness over pipes through 

 which the .sea water ran continuously day and night during the 

 voyage from Liverpool to Quebec. These nets were emptied 

 morning and evening. Mr. Garstang's method gave gatherings 

 taken intermittently during the day, while Prof. Herdman's 

 gave each day and each night as a continuous gathering. The 

 results differed a little, showing that both these plans should 

 be adopted in future observations. One point brought out 

 by these papers was the efficient and inexpensive character of 

 this method of collecting plankton. To obtain any number of 

 samples of the surface organisms of the great oceans, collected 

 either periodically or continuously, little or no expense need be 

 incurred beyond the naturalist's passage! It is not even necessary 

 that the naturalist should make the voyage himself. The 

 methods of collection and preservation are so simple that they 

 can be carried out by one of the officers on board. This 

 method, which was first introduced by Dr. John Murray, will 

 probably be largely employed by biologists in the future. 



On Saturday the Section did not sit, as a natural history 

 excur.sion had been arranged in conjunction with Section K. 



Monday, August 23— Prof. Poulton gave a paper on mimicry 

 as evidence of the truth of natural selection, illustrated with the 

 lantern. He described cases where very different butterflies and 

 moths had converged in their characters, to a dark-coloured type 

 of insect having certain clear spots upon the wings. These clear 

 spots have been acquired independently in the different ca.ses by 

 entirely distinct methods— by loss of scales, by the conversion 

 of .scales into hairs, and in other ways. He also cited cases ot 

 various insects which mimicked ants, and which had acquired 

 the resemblance by quite distinct methods. 



Other papers taken this morning were : — Dr. L. O. Howard 

 on economic entomology in America ; Mr. J. F. Whiteaves on 

 New Sepiadre from the Lower Cretaceous of the South 

 Saskatchewan ; Prof. F. V. Edgeworth on the statistics of bees': 

 an inquiry into the time occupied by the successive journeys of 

 workers ; and by Prof. J. H. Panton on the appearance of the 

 army-worm in Ontario during the summer of 1896. 



In the afternoon Prof. Miall gave an account, with lantern 

 illustrations, of a supposed new insect structure — a cellular 

 organ found in connection with the heart and of doubtful 

 function ; Mr. W. Garstang had a paper on recapitulation in 

 development, as illustrated by the life-history of the masked 

 crab [Corystes) ; and Prof. G. Gilson gave a detailed description 

 of the musculo-glandular cells in Annelids. Prof. Gilson's 

 chief results are : ( i ) That the subepidermic part of the body-wall 

 of Polygordius, Owenia, and many other Annelids consists of 

 only one layer of mesodermic cells. These are much elongated 

 j and divide into an outer part, which becomes differentiated into 

 1 muscular substance, and an inner one containing all the nuclei, 

 j and which has been erroneously regarded as coelomic endothe- 

 I Hum. The coelom has no proper membrane on its parietal sur- 

 j face ; and the myotomic sacs remain monodermic on their outer 

 j face. (2) That in Owenia the elements which con.stitute the 

 I monodermic outer wall of the coelom, are musculo-glandular 

 ; cells which may be classified with the neuromuscular cells of 

 \ Coelenterates. The author shows that the use of the secretion 

 i formed by the inner glandular processes of the cells is to produce 

 I a plasma in which the genital products float and are carried away. 

 [ The Section then adjourned to a natural history excursion at 

 I Ashbridge Bay, in conjunction with Section K. 

 i Tuesday, August 24.— First came Prof Herdman's paper 

 "on the plankton collected continuously during a traverse of the 

 Atlantic " (see above), and then a .series of papers on vertebrate 

 morphology ; Prof Theodore Gill on the determinants for 

 1 the major classification of fish-like vertebrates, and on the 

 derivation of the pectoral member in terrestrial vertebrates ; Dr. 

 W. H. Gaskell on the morphological significance of the com- 

 parative study of cardiac nerves, and Dr. Elliot Smith's observ- 

 ations upon the morphology of the cerebral commissures in the 

 vertebrata. 



NO. 1458, VOL. 56] 



