548 



NA TURE 



[April 6, 1905 



housing and endowing the college by passing the following 

 resolution : — " That the authorities of Bedford College in 

 issuing an appeal for funds in accordance with the scheme 

 submitted to the Senate be permitted to state that the 

 appeal is made with the knowledge and full approval of 

 the Senate." The Princess of Wales has promised a 

 donation to the funds, and Lady Tate has promised 

 lo.oooi. for a library to be called after the late Sir Henry 

 Tate. Donations to the fund may be sent to Major 

 Darwin, hon. treasurer of the college, or to Miss Henrietta 

 Busk, hon secretary of the appeal fund, at Bedford College, 

 Baker Street, W. Friends of higher education for women 

 are urged to help in placing the college on an adequate 

 and permanent basis. 



Mr. Arnold-Forster, M.P., Secretary of State for War, 

 distributed the prizes to successful students of the Wool- 

 wich Polytechnic on Saturday last. In his speech which 

 followed the presentation of the prizes Mr. Arnold-Forster 

 emphasised the importance of sound scientific and technical 

 education. He said that the great lesson this country has 

 to learn is the importance of scientific organisation. There 

 was a time, not so long ago, when we were in the habit 

 of laughing at the methods and ways in vogue on the 

 Continent, and of considering ourselves immeasurably 

 superior to Germany and other nations. But a change 

 has taken place, and these other nations — not by following 

 our example, but by organising on scientific lines — have 

 become immeasurably more advanced and fit to succeed 

 than those who preceded them one or two generations 

 ago ; and we have to exert ourselves to protect ourselves 

 from defeat in the industrial contest. Referring to the 

 importance of scientific organisation, Mr. Arnold-Forster 

 spoke of an instance in which he discovered that the 

 electric carbons in use by the Admiralty were largely 

 manufactured in France. Realising the importance of 

 this in case of war, he made inquiries, and, as the result 

 of these and of experiment, it has been found possible to 

 produce electric carbons in this country of the same per- 

 fection and accuracy as those formerly brought in from 

 abroad. He expressed his pleasure that a great step for- 

 ward has been made in the matter of standardising and 

 testing, and that in both these departments this country 

 is abreast of the times. A good deal could be done by 

 scientific organisation, and he looked to such institutions 

 as the polytechnics to accomplish much in that direction. 



The address delivered by Prof. Henry T. Bovey, F.R.S., 

 at the Universal Exposition, St. Louis, 1904, on the funda- 

 mental conceptions which enter into technology, has been 

 reprinted as a pamphlet from the McGill University 

 Magazine. After defining the " technologue " as an inter- 

 mediary between the savant and the mechanic, translating 

 the discoveries of the former into the uses of the latter. 

 Prof. Bovey tries to ascertain the controlling ideas common 

 to all technical experts. These, he says, have all observed 

 that nature works in no arbitrary manner, but by fixed 

 laws ; that if these laws could be brought into right re- 

 lation with us, we might be able to gear our small 

 machines to the vast wheel of nature ; that in the study 

 of the laws of nature there is certainly revealed more of 

 the infinite possibilities of our environment. In order to 

 study to advantage, workers in pure and applied science 

 must get into line with psychological laws, when it will 

 be found that the apprehension of a fact by the mind re- 

 quires the exercise of the power of observation, and the 

 observations must be of a special character, minute, 

 accurate, and selective. Observation, he says, means to 

 see with attention, and as soon as concentration takes 

 place, a process of analysis begins and the worker passes 

 to classification and generalisation. Throughout this pro- 

 cess the training of the hand stimulates the brain centres. 

 Technology has a two-fold nature ; first, learning by 

 specialised study how to understand and apply the prin- 

 ciples of mechanics to the construction of works of utility, 

 and, secondly, training the mind to work easily along 

 lines of scientific thought. The idea of utility, he main- 

 tains, seems to be the key to the distinction between pure 

 science and technology ; indeed, technology may be called 

 the child of science on one hand, and of industrial progress 

 on the other. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



London. 



Royal Society, March 16. — " On the Occurrence of 

 Certain Ciliated Infusoria within the Eggs of a Rotifer, 

 considered from the Point of View of Heterogenesis." 

 By H. Charlton Bastian, M.A., .M.D., F.R.S. 



The weight of preconceptions against the possibility of 

 the occurrence of heterogenesis has hitherto been so 

 strong as to have made it almost impossible to obtain any 

 adequate consideration for the actual evidence adduced in 

 favour of this or that alleged instance. But of late, pre- 

 conceptions in the domain of physics and chemistry have 

 received severe shocks, and when we are told that a so- 

 called " element " is daily being transformed and another 

 is actually originating therefrom, there appears more 

 chance of attention being paid to the alleged existence of 

 phenomena in the organic world which would seem to be 

 but the carrying on into a higher platform of the familiar 

 but important phenomena known as allotropism and 

 isomerism. 



Hitherto, alleged instances of heterogenesis have, with- 

 out adequate consideration of evidence, been almost always 

 assumed to be results of " infection," but the writer claims 

 that in the cases with whiih the present memoir is con- 

 cerned, any such explanation is quite impossible in regard 

 to one of the cases, at least, in which we have masses of 

 living matter so large that they average ^ mm. in 

 diameter, being converted in the course of three days into 

 great ciliated Infusoria of equal bulk 



The communication (which is illustrated by a large 

 number of photomicrographs) deals with two sets of hetero- 

 genetic transformations occurring in the great eggs or 

 " gemmae " of one of the largest of the rotifers, namely, 

 (i) the transformation of the entire contents of a Hydatina 

 egg into a single great Otostoma ; and (2) the segment- 

 ation of the Hydatina egg into twelve to twenty spherical 

 masses, and the development of these sometimes into 

 embryo Vorticellas and sometimes into embryo Oxytrich;e. 



(i) The Transformation of the Entire Contents of a 

 Hydatina Egg into a Great Otostoma. — Having witnessed 

 on very many occasions the stages of this remarkable 

 transformation of the contents of a rotifer's egg into a 

 ciliated infusorium, the author is desirous of acquainting 

 the Royal Society with the simple procedure needful to en- 

 able zoologists to study for themselves the series of changes 

 leading to a result which many of them may be disposed 

 to deem incredible. 



All that is necessary is to procure a good stock of these 

 large rotifers by placing some surface mud, having a 

 coating of EuglenK, from a ditch in which Hydatinae are 

 known to exist, into a glass bowl, and to pour thereon 

 water to a depth of about 4 inches. In the course of two 

 or three days (with a temperature of 16° C. or 17° C), if 

 the Hydatinaa are abundant, a good crop of their large 

 eggs will be seen at the surface of the fluid, where it is 

 in contact with the glass. 



By the aid of a scalpel passed along their track for a 

 short distance, groups of twenty or thirty eggs may be 

 taken up at one time, and gently pressed off the edge of 

 the blade into a small, white stone pot fuH of water. 

 Some of such small masses of eggs (mixed, perhaps, with 

 a few Euglenae) will float, and others will sink. After 

 seven or eight of these masses have been gathered and 

 deposited, the cover should be placed upon the pot so as 

 to cut off from the eggs all light rays, both visible and 

 invisible. Two other pots should be similarly charged. 



When the pots have remained covered for thirty-six 

 hours, one of them may be opened, and some of the small 

 masses of eggs from the bottom of the pot should be 

 taken up with a tiny pipette and placed in a drop of water 

 on a microscope slip. 



On examination by a low power it will be seen that 

 there are many empty egg-iascs, that within some eggs 

 there are embryo Hydatina- in different stages of develop- 

 ment, while within the rem.iining eggs the contents will 

 be wholly different, consisting of an aggregate of minute 

 pellucid vesicles, each containing a few granules, together 

 with a variable amount of gr;uuiles interspersed among 

 the vesicles. 



NO. 1849, VOL. 71] 



