S2 



NATURE 



[November 22, 1894 



have led him to the belief in the paired nature of the 

 cyclostome nose, but they are curiously at variance with 

 those of Von Kupffer that have lately led to the opposite 

 conclusion. His remarks upon the functions of the 

 thread-forming type of cutaneous gland are particularly 

 welcome, in correlation with Weymouth Reid's work 

 upon the origin and constitution of the thread substance. 

 Concerning the ear, he records the striking result that 

 while removal of one labyrinth leads to marked disturb- 

 ances in the equilibrative function, on the removal of 

 both ears all trace of such disturbance disappears. 

 Morphologists and physiologists will await with interest 

 the full edition of this important communication. 



Lectures viii. and ix. are botanical, and as unequal in 

 merit as any two in the whole work. One of them, by 

 Prof. Muirhead Macfarlane, on " Irrito-contractility in 

 Plants," is a record of some beautiful and striking experi- 

 ments, a very charming one being that with a block of 

 ice, from which he has drawn the conclusion that 

 displacement of the Oxalis leaf under its action is the 

 etTect of cold and not of weight. The author 

 reverts to his earlier observation, no less beautiful 

 and striking, that in order to induce the closure of the 

 Dionaa leaf the application of two successive stimuli 

 within proper intervals is necessary. He deduces two 

 leading principles — (i) that plants, like animals, being 

 in a condition of protoplasmic continuity, are, by virtue 

 of it, possessed of a power of general contractility ; and 

 (2) that the positions taken up by the Oxalis and other 

 leaves under the action of the tropical sun are due to heat 

 and not light effects. The other lecture, by Prof. W. P. 

 Wilson, on " The Influence of External Conditions on 

 Plant Life," contains little new, and is in part vague 

 and unintelligible. 



The volume closes with an illustrated report on " The 

 Marine Biological Stations of Europe," by Dr. Bashford 

 Dean, and an appendix on " The Work and the Aims of 

 the Marine Biological Laboratory " at Wood's Holl, by 

 Prof. Whitman, giving a list of close upon too papers 

 produced under its auspices. 



It cannot have escaped the reader's notice th.';t the con- 

 tents of the book are largely reports upon experimental 

 work which bears directly upon the recent theories of 

 Weismann, so popular in our own land. Contemporane- 

 ously with the labours of Wilson and Loeb, of which an 

 account is given in its pages, the work of Driesch, 

 Herbst, and others, which carries us back through that of 

 Vejdovsky, Chun, and Chabr>', to the classical obser- 

 vation of Ha:ckcl, now twenty-five years old, that 

 detached portions of the fully segmented ovum (of the 

 Siphonophoran Crystallodcs) may give rise to young 

 animals, have materially modified our conception of 

 certain fundamentals of embryology. The observation 

 that variation in development, '' twinning," and other kin- 

 dred phenomena, may bear a definite relationship to 

 variation in temperature, chemical composition, and 

 osmotic pressure of the surrounding medium, is now 

 well established. The discovery that after the removal 

 of cither the micromcrcs or macromeres, the segmenting 

 embryonic mass may still form a gastrula — that the 

 differentiation of outer layer cells to form certain larval 

 organs may be directly a question of location — and that 

 certain blastomcres if separated at the two-celled stage 

 may each give rise to an embryo one-half size, and if 

 isolated at the four-celled stage to one of one-fourth 

 size, is very extraordinary ; and, viewing the situa- 

 tion generally, one is prone to ask where now are 

 the said theories i" Concerning them. Prof. Wilson 

 replies " the fine spun thread . . . leads us little 

 by little into an unknown region, so remote from the 

 lerra firina of observed fact that verification and 

 disproof are alike impossible." The theories of Weis- 

 mann were ori>;inally framed with the laudable desire of 

 stimulating inquiry. They do not seek to explain the 



NO. 1308, VOL. 51] 



actual modus operandi of the hereditary process so much 

 as to localise the seat of hereditary tendency and influ- 

 ence. The implication that neither proof nor disproof are 

 possible, applies, for the matter of that, to even the 

 theory of descent with modification 7'cr.f;/.f that of special 

 creation. The educated mind has, however, upon purely 

 logical grounds, chosen between the alternatives in this 

 instance, and it may be safely relied upon to do so in 

 the other. G. B. H. 



NOTES. 



The anniversary meeting of the Royal Society will be held 

 on Friday, November 30. 



At the first monthly meeting of the Royal Statistical Society 

 for the present session, held on Tuesday afternoon, a gold Guy 

 Medal was presented lo Dr. Robert Gifl'en, C.B., F.R.S., in 

 recognition of his long and exceptional services to statistical 

 science. 



M. Louis Figuier, who died on November S, was an 

 eminent populariser of the results of scientific research. He 

 was born at Montpellier in 1819, where he took his degree 

 of Doctor of Medicine in 1841. A few years later he 

 became Professor of Pharmacy in the Paris Ecole de Pharmacie. 

 In 1850 he took his degree as Doctor of Science at Toulouse, 

 lie published some important memoirs on chemical subjects, 

 but will be remembered chiefly for his numerous works on 

 popular science. Since 1856, he issued every year the Aniu'e 

 Scieiilifique, in which he summarised the most interesting and 

 important scientific discoveries of the year. 



The Manchester correspondent of the Lancet says that the 

 sum of ;£'783 \os. 31/. has been raised for the fund in memory of 

 the late Prof. Milnes Marshall, and after expenses £^(iO 2s. ^J. 

 will be left. Of this sum ;{;^65o have been invested in Man- 

 chester Corporation Stock to provide for the maintenance of 

 the Marshall Biological Library given to the Owens College by 

 the relatives of Prof. Marshall, while ;f 102 8i. 6./. have been 

 similarly invested to provide a " Marshall Gold Medal" to be 

 annually competed for at the Owens College athletic sports. 



Dr. J. ScHKlNER, of the Potsdam Astro-Physical Observa- 

 tory, has been appointed Extraordinary Professor in Berlin 

 University. 



A severe earth<iuake occurred on Friday last in Sicily and 

 Southern Italy. The shocks were felt not only in the city and 

 district of Messina, and several other places in Sicily, but also 

 throughout the province of Reggio di Calabria, in Southern 

 Italy. The disturbance was also recorded upon the seismic in- 

 struments at Rome and Ischia. Shocks of more or less violence 

 were felt at Palmi, Seminara, Santa Eufemia, and San Pro- 

 copio, in the province of Reggio di Calabria. The centre of 

 the disturbance in thi< province appears to have been in the 

 west, round the towns of Palmi and ISagnara. San Procopio, 

 a town near Palmi, h.-is been almost entirely destroyed, and it is 

 estimated that at least two hundred persons have perished at 

 that place alone. Since Friday the district of Kcggio di 

 Calabria has been slightly disturbed, but these tremors have 

 not caused any further damage. 



The Drapers' Company have contributed /'20 lo the funds of 

 the Epjjing Forest Museum, now being formed in (^uecn 

 Elizabeth's Lodge, Chingford, by the Essex Field Club, under 

 the sanction of ihc Epping Forest Committee of the Corporation 

 of London. The museum is intended to illustrate the natural 

 history, antiquities, and scenery of this beautiful district. 



The Weekly Weather Refcrl o{ the lyih instant shows that 

 in many districts the rainfall greatly exceeded the mean ; over 

 all the southern counties of Engl.and the amount was nearly four 

 times as much as the average. The largest amounts recorded at 



