1 88 



NATURE 



[November 7, igiS 



might mean little or nothing. By splitting up a 

 large sample of Blennies into groups representing 

 successive years of age, Dr. Schmidt obtained 

 significantly different average values. By taking 

 average values of a character in a number of 

 mothers, and average values <>l the same character 

 in a number of their offspring, he again obtained 

 different "racial pictures." finally, by taking 

 different broods of young from the same mothers 

 and rearing these in different conditions signifi- 

 cantly different average values for the characters 

 were again obtained. Character differences are 

 thus both "genotypical " and " phanotypieal," in 

 Johannsen's terminology. The "race" is a mix- 

 ture of "genotypes," pure lines of descent in 

 which there is i onstancy of value of character, and 

 variational studies only give statistical expressions 

 for these mixtures of genes. 



The average racial character is much more 

 the result of the mixture, in various propor- 

 tions, of genes than due to the environment; 

 nevertheless, the latter may be very important. 

 Thus Dr. Schmidt shows that all the fresh- 

 water eels of Europe are racially the same, 

 the average values of the diagnostic char- 

 acters being practically identical ; this is be- 

 cause the environment is really the same, that 

 of the deep water in the Atlantic, where all those 

 eels are spawned and undergo larval development, 

 fixing certain characters for the rest of the life- 

 time. But the Blennies are non-migratory fishes, 

 and each locality has its own stock. Selection has 

 therefore operated in helping to produce the differ- 

 ences that variation statistics reveal. The environ- 

 ment also acts directly, as is indicated by the 

 experiments recorded 'in Dr. Schmidt's second 

 paper, producing significant character differences 

 which need not, of course, be transmissible. 



J- J- 



CANON ALFRED MERLE NORMAN, F.R.S. 

 TT has often been remarked that the study of 

 -L science in this country has been notably 

 advanced by the efforts of those who have never 

 been professionally engaged in it. Canon Norman, 

 who died on October 26, belonged to the best type 

 "I this class of scientific worker. His name will 

 be long remembered for the conspicuous service 

 he rendered to the study of the marine Inverte- 

 brate fauna of the Atlantic and Arctic areas, and 

 for the special interest he took in deep-sea dredg- 

 ing at the time when the wonders of the abvssis 

 were first being revealed. The voungest son of 

 John Norman, D.L., of Iwood, Congresburv, and 

 Claverham House, Yatton, Somerset, he was born 

 at Exeter in 1831, and was educated at Win- 

 chester and Christ Church, On lord, where he took 

 his first degree in 1852. 1 He was ordained deacon 

 in 1856, and priest in 1857. Alter holding several 

 curacies he was presented to the living of Burn- 

 moor, Co. Durham, in 1866, where he spent nearly 

 thirty years, becoming rector of Houghton-le- 



■ ' /PS* P e r so » a ' details have been taken from " P,nck N lied* and Herts 

 in the Twentieth Century." (Brighton : W. T. Pike anil Co.) 



NO. 2558, VOL. 102] 



Spring, in tin same county, in 1895, and rural 

 dean. He was obliged by illness to give up this 

 appointment in [898, and he soon afterwards 

 settled at Berkhamsted, Herts, where he died. 

 He had become Hon. (.'anon of Durham Cathedral 

 in [885. 



When quite a child A. M. Norman was inte- 

 rested in botany by his brother", the Hon. John 

 Paxton Norman, officiating Chiel Justice of 

 Bengal, who was assassinated by a fanatic in 

 1871. At Winchester he studied entomology, and 

 at Oxford he devoted his attention specially to the 

 Mollusca of the county, of which he published an 

 account. While acting as private tutor in the 

 house of the Dowager Countess of Glasgow, at 

 Cumbrae, in 1S54-55, he first seriously took up 

 the study of the marine fauna, and from that time 

 he spent nearly all his summer vacations in dredg- 

 ing round the British Isles, Norway, and 

 Madeira, and in the Mediterranean. He thus 

 formed the nucleus of his famous collection of the 

 marine Invertebrates of the Arctic circumpolar 

 seas and of the temperate North Atlantic, together 

 with the inland representatives of the same classes 

 of animals which inhabit the Palaearctic region. 

 This collection was estimated to consist of about 

 10,000 species and named varieties in 1895. While 

 a large part of it was obtained by himself, many 

 of his choicest treasures were specimens of his- 

 torical interest which had been purchased or given 

 to him. It was thus extraordinarily rich in type- 

 specimens acquired in these various ways, and it 

 surpassed in importance anything of the same 

 kind existing elsewhere. Before his death Canon 

 Norman transferred it to the British Museum 

 (Natural History), and he presented his almost 

 equally noteworthy collection of books and 

 pamphlets to the zoological departments of the 

 University of Cambridge. 



In these days of specialisation the breadth of 

 Canon Norman's interests may well be considered 

 remarkable. It would be difficult to find another 

 modern zoologist able to write with authority on 

 two groups so different as the Polyzoa and the 

 Crustacea, for example. Not only was Dr. 

 Norman an acknowledged authority on both of 

 them, but he was equally well acquainted with 

 others, such as Mollusca, Tunieata, Foraminifera, 

 and sponges. Most of his work was systematic, 

 and a good idea of its general character can be 

 obtained from his papers entitled "A Month on 

 the Trondhjem Fiord," published in 1893 and 

 [894. ft is scarcely necessary to add that lie made 

 many additions to the British fauna in many 

 diverse groups, besides describing large numbers 

 of new species. 



The remarkable genus Rhabdopleura was 

 dredged by Canon Norman in ninety fathoms off 

 the Shetland Islands and sent to Prof. G. J. 

 Allman, by whom it was described. This organism 

 had no near allies among forms then known, and 

 its affinities were not properly understood until 

 after tin discovery by the Chcdlengef of Cephalo- 

 discus, a second member of the same group. 

 Another of his specially noteworthy discoveries- 



