588 



NATURE 



[October io, 1901 



while the plateau itself seems to have been formed by the 

 washing away of the original land by wave and current 

 aclions. 



(2) Mr. E. J. Bles, on a method for recording local faunas. 

 Mr. Bles urges the use of uniform slips as in a librAy card cata- 

 logue, each slip to contain name of species, locality, date of 

 capture, &c. The advantages of cooperation should be combined 

 with this coordination of the recorders. 



(3) Prof. J. Arthur Thomson's germinal selection in relation 

 to inheritance was an attempt to test the utility of Weismann's 

 subtle theory as a provisional interpretation of some of the im- 

 portant facts of inheritance. After inserting "a struggle of 

 gametes and potential gametes " between the " histonal " or 

 intra-organismal selection of Koux and the " germinal selection " 

 of Weismann, he sought to extend Weismann's conception, 

 pointing out that within the germ there might be three forms of 

 struggle : (tz) between determinants of the same character ; 

 {b) between determinants of quite different kinds ; and (c) be- 

 tween the determinants and their somatic or more external en- 

 vironment. But the bulk of the paper was devoted to testing 

 the theory as a unifying interpretation of otherwise unrelated 

 facts of inheritance. 



{4) Prof. Thomson also gave some notes on the behaviour of 

 young gulls artificially and naturally hatched. After describing 

 the actions of the young Lams ridibundus in the first three days 

 after hatching, he noted that the young birds never ate deleterious 

 or useless substances ; that it took them a relatively long time to 

 learn to recognise water in a shallow dish, though they drank with 

 avidity when plunged into water or when they got their bills wet 

 by pecking at their feet or at particles while standing in the 

 water ; that swimming and preening movements were seen in 

 great perfection as early as the third day ;and that the " kin- 

 instinct " seemed very strong. 



In the afternoon there were two papers by Mr. W. S. Bruce, 

 on the fishes of the Coats' Arctic Expedition and preliminary 

 notice of the fauna of Franz Josef Land, a paper by Dr. T. H. 

 Bryce on heterotypical division in the maturation of the sexual 

 cells, and a demonstration by Prof. Marcus llartog and Mr. Nevil 

 Maskelyne on the mechanism of the frog's tongue, showing 

 the method of protrusion by means of a model. 



On Saturday, September 14, the Section did not meet, but a 

 number of the biologists took part in a very pleasant and suc- 

 cessful expedition in connection with the Millport Marine 

 Station. The party, on board the steamer Ivatihoe, accompanied 

 the steam-yacht Alervtaid^ belonging to the station, on a dredging 

 and trawling excursion round the shores of Cumbra;. In the 

 afternoon the party landed and inspected the Marine Station, 

 including aquaria, laboratory and the " Robertson " Museum. 

 Copies of a special handbook issued by the Marine Biological 

 Association of the West of Scotland, and compiled by the hon. 

 sec, Mr. J. A. Todd, were supplied to the visitors. .This gives 

 an interesting account of the history of the Marine Station, and 

 of the successive benefactions — Sir John Murray's " Ark," the 

 " David Robertson " Museum, the present building, due largely 

 tolhe liberality of Dr. Thomas Keid, the steam-yacht Mermaid, 

 and other gifts from an anonymous donor — crowned, we believe, 

 by an additional 3500/. given since this excursion to provide an 

 extension of the building. 



On September 16 the following papers were laid before the 

 Section : — (l) Mr. J. J. Lister, on dimorphism in Foraminifera, 

 with lantern illustrations. This subject was exemplified by the 

 life-history of Polystoiiiclla crispa, in which two forms occur, 

 the microspheric and the megalospheric, difiering from one 

 another in the size of the central chambers, the character of the 

 nuclei and in relative frequency. The transition from the 

 microspheric to the megalospheric form was traced by a series 

 of photographs of an individual of the microspheric form, the 

 protoplasm of which emerged from the shell and broke up into 

 a brood of megalospheric young. These having reached maturity 

 give rise in turn to actively motile zoospores. It was shown 

 that the facts of the life-history are inconsistent with the view 

 that the two forms represent the two sexes, but confirm that 

 which regards them as alternating or recurring forms in a cycle 

 of generations. While the megalospheric form arises asexually, 

 there are considerable grounds for supposing that the micro- 

 spheric form is produced by the conjugation of zoospores. 



(2) Dr. J. Y. Simpson, on the relation of binary fission and 

 conjugation to variation. The species specially examined were 

 Faiamecium eatidatuin and Styloiiichia pustulata, and exam- 

 ination was restricted to (a) general outline, ( ^) total length, 



NO 1667, VOL. 64] 



(c) extreme width, {d) distance between contractile vacuoles, 

 («) length of middle caudal bristle. In all five points variation 

 was found. This wai illustrated by microphotography. The 

 author contends that there is variation in binary fission, and 

 that the process is not merely one of duplication. 



{3) Mr. W. E. Hoyle, on a new form of luminous organ, 

 intrapallial, in Cephalopoda. 



(4) Mr. R. Shelford, on the habits and life-histories of some 

 Sarawak insects, illustrated by the lantern. 



(5) Prof. J. C. Ewart gave a lantern demonstration on zebras 

 and zebra hybrids. This was illustrated by an exhibition of 

 three of the actual hybrids in the medical quadrangle (see 

 description below). 



(6) Dr. J. F. Gemmill, on a large nematode parasitic in the 

 sea-urchin. This worm, which the author proposes to call 

 Echinoneiiia grayi, occurs in the perivisceral cavity, and seems 

 to have escaped notice except for a brief mention by A. E. 

 Shipley in 1900. The females are 60 to 150 cms. in length, and 

 the males only 5 to 10 cms. An account of the anatomy was- 

 given. 



(7) Mr. F. H. Marshall gave exhibitions of abnormal speci- 

 mens of Nep/irops, and of microscopic preparations of mammalian 

 hairs. 



Some of the members of the Section took part on the Monday 

 forenoon in a conference between Sections C, D and E on the 

 subject of limnology, with special relation to the scientific study 

 of the lakes of the British Islands. It was announced that 

 Sir John Murray and Mr. Lawrence Pullar had undertaken to 

 defray the expenses of a survey to be undertaken by three 

 scientific men during five years, and the conference discussed 

 the best methods of carrying out the proposed scheme from the 

 points of view of the different sciences involved. 



On September 17, four papers were taken in the morning: — 

 (i) Mr. C. Forster Cooper, on the fauna of an atoll, with 

 lantern illustrations. 



(2) Mr. L. A. Borradaile, on the land crustaceans of a coral 

 island. The author pointed out the importance of land 

 crustaceans in the economy of tropical nature in general, and of 

 a coral island in particular. He then enumerated the species he 

 had observed in the island of Minikoi in the Indian Ocean with 

 an account of their appearance and habits. Special emphasis 

 w.as laid on the interesting land hermit-crabs of the genus 

 Coenohifa. 



(3) Mr. y. S. Budgett, on the youngest known larva of 

 Polyplenis, with lantern illustrations. From his observations on 

 the structure of the pectoral fin, the primordial cranium and the 

 visceral arches of this larva, obtained in the Gambia in 1900, the 

 author believed that the Crossopterygii showed affinities with the 

 Selachii, but that the structure and development of the urino- 

 genital organs, though in both probably of a very primitive 

 nature, disclosed teleostean affinities, while the structu.-e of the 

 osseous skeleton has in many points been shown to resemble 

 that of the Slegocephali and Amphibians. He therefore con- 

 cluded that the Crossopterygii were a central group retaining 

 relations with most of the great groups of Ichthyopsida, but not 

 being actually ancestral to any one of them. 



(4) Mr. J. Graham Kerr, on the'origin of the vertebrate limbs. 

 The author gave a short account of his hypothesis of the 

 homodynamy of the vertebrate paired limbs with the true external 

 gills. After pointing out the absence of solid foundation in fact 

 for the two most widely accepted hypotheses of the origin of the 

 paired fins, and having criticised these two views generally, he 

 accentuated the probability that the two main types of limb, 

 Ichthyopterygium (including Archipterygium) and Cheiroptery- 

 gium, were derived independently from a simple styliform 

 projection of the body (Stylopterygium), which was used, not for 

 swimming, but for clambering about a solid substratum. This, 

 from the evidence of Braus and others, was probably somewhere 

 about the hind end of the branchial region. Now were there 

 any projections from the body in this region from which the 

 motor stylopterygium could have become evolved ? Mr. Kerr 

 pointed out that in the true external gills there existed a series 

 of organs, projecting in various groups of lower vertebrates from 

 the visceral arches (I. -VI. inclusive). These organs were 

 potentially motor organs, as was shown by their powerful 

 muscular apparatus and by the active flicking movements which 

 they could perform ; they were also potentially supporting struc- 

 tures, as was shown by the so-called "balancers," in which form the 

 mandibular pair persisted in many Urodeles. He held that by 

 far the simplest view of the origin of the paired limbs was that 



