472 



NATURE 



[September 5, 1907 



time to be considered in making the award. Prof. 

 R. Hertwig, of Munich, gave a long address on the 

 most recent researches on cytology. He spoke in 

 German, and it was not always easy, in spite of his 

 lucidity and illustrative charts, to follow his dis- 

 cussion of the intricate relations between the nucleo- 

 plasm and the cytoplasm. Of particular interest was 

 the account of his observations on the influence of 

 temperature on the size and rate of division of the 

 chromosomes. 



The meetings of the sections were held in the truly 

 magnificent buildings of the Harvard Medical School, 

 which stand like five marble temples on the three 

 sides of a quadrangle, and are admirably designed 

 for internal re-adjustment or for external extension 

 outwards as future circumstances may demand. The 

 internal equipment of the various departments, e.g. 

 Prof. C. S. Minot's embryological laboratories, called 

 forth universal admiration. Great praise is due to 

 the organisers of the congress for the way in which 

 they secured the orderly accomplishment of the 

 scientific business and for the embarrassingly tempt- 

 ing arrangements for excursions. For creature com- 

 forts most thoughtful care was taken, Irom the 

 providing of a\ fresco luncheons to the presence of a 

 nurse ! 



The intellectual bill of fare — a metaphor which can- 

 not be avoided amid so much hospitality — was all toe 

 full. Never can the zoologist of good appetite and 

 digestion have wished more ardently that he could be, 

 as Sir Boyle Roche's bird, " in two places at once." 

 For in spite of clever arrangements, there was no 

 avoiding the simultaneous occurrence of interesting 

 events. This holds especially true in regard to the 

 sectional addresses, which included the following : — 

 The problem of the vertebrate head, by Prof. 

 J. P. McMurrich ; the chemical aspect of fer- 

 tilisation, by Prof. Jacques Loeb ; cytology and 

 taxonomy, by Prof. C. E. McClung ; facts limit. 

 ing the theory of heredity, by Mr. William 

 Bateson ; foetal membranes, by Prof. A. A. W. 

 Hubrecht ; operative factors in development, by 

 Prof. W. Roux ; economic entomology, by Dr. 

 L. O. Howard ; the relations between North 

 American and European Hemiptera, by Dr. Geza 

 Horvath ; the problem of organic development, 

 by Prof. C. O. Whitman ; migrations of Tertiary 

 faunas, by Prof. C. Deperet ; the scope and 

 promise of systematic zoology, by Dr. T. Gill ; 

 the evolution of continents as illustrated by the 

 geographical distribution of animals, by Dr. 

 R. F. Scharff. 



One of the most striking of the sectional addresses 

 delivered at the congress was that on the chemical 

 character of fertilisation, by Prof. Jacques Loeb, of 

 Chicago, delivered before an audience of about three 

 hundred. He began by distinguishing between the 

 function of the spermatozoon as a bearer of hereditary 

 qualities and its function as an instigator of develop- 

 ment. In connection with the latter the foremost effect 

 is the enormous synthesis of nuclear matter. To 

 attain to some understanding of the hydrolytic and 

 other processes which the spermatozoon sets up in the 

 egg, the most promising path at present is to study 

 the phenomena of artificial parthenogenesis. By 

 adding to " hypertonic " sea-water a small quantity of 

 a monobasic fatty acid. Prof. Loeb has been able to 

 induce in sea-urchin ova the formation of an egg mem- 

 brane and perfectly normal development in the great 

 majority of the eggs of a given female. The effects of 

 the spermatozoon were thus more perfectly imitated 

 than by the previous purely osmotic methods. Prof. 

 Loeb's results lead him to the general conclusion that 

 the membrane-formation is connected with the solution 

 of a layer of fatty material underneath the surface-film 

 NO. 1975, VOL. 76] 



of the egg. It seems that the essential feature of 

 the process of fertilisation consists first in a liquefac- 

 tion or hydrolysis, or both, of fatty compounds in 

 the egg, and second, in starting the processes of 

 oxidation in the right direction. The lecturer ended 

 his discussion by making a very suggestive com- 

 parison between the chemical processes in the germin- 

 ation of oily seeds and those in the early development 

 of the animal ovum. The general idea to which the 

 experiments on the artificial parthenogenesis (of sea- 

 urchins, Lottia, Polynoe, and Sipunculus) point is that 

 the spermatozoon acts as a catalyser. 



Sir John Murray gave a general afternoon address 

 on the progress of oceanography, and another was 

 given by that genial iconoclast, Prof. W. K. Brooks, 

 who calmly asked, " ."Xre Heredity and Variation 

 facts?" If philosophy is a criticism of categories, 

 the latter address was certainly philosophical, for its 

 aim was to show that specialisation — none the less 

 dangerous because often unconscious — necessarily 

 leads to partial abstractions. Such, according to 

 Prof. Brooks, are heredity and variation. The 

 former means likeness between offspring and 

 their parents; the latter means divergence of 

 the offspring from the likeness of their parents. 

 But these two aspects in isolation are not facts ; 

 they express our artificially abstracted realisation 

 of one fact — kinship and individuality are in- 

 separable. It might be suggested that heredity is 

 more correctly definable as the relation of genetic con- 

 tinuity between successive generations — a relation 

 which presents, on the one hand, the aspect of con- 

 tinuity, persistence, or hereditary resemblance, and, on 

 the other, the aspect of divergence, novelty, or 

 variation ; but the lecturer would not accept this 

 suggestion. 



Much of the lecture, which was enlivened by a fine 

 humour and by epigrams condensing much reflection, 

 was in great part an apologia for the individuality of 

 the living creature. " Like never does produce like, 

 but only something like." " The sheep which the 

 morphologist finds to be all alike, are all unlike, as 

 the shepherd's dog knows. Each ewe knows its own 

 lamb." (Is even this a fact?) " One never meets the 

 average man, the normal man of the statistician." 

 " Statistics of mortality are very useful, but they have 

 no bearing on your death or mine." "We speak of 

 the struggle for existence, but every struggle is private 

 and particular in every respect." 



If we follow Prof. Brooks's line of argument, we are 

 led to the conclusion that since we cannot think of a 

 living organism without an environment in which it 

 lives, then the living organism is not a fact — it is only 

 a scientific abstraction of one side of a fact ; and so 

 far as we understand, the Berkeleyan biologist did not 

 hesitate to take this step. " The being is not in itself, 

 but in its reciprocal relations." It is therefore illusory 

 to speak of a material substratum of inheritance ; the 

 real creature is not in the idioplasm, or the chromo- 

 somes, or the determinants, or the vital units; it is to 

 be sought and found in the reciprocal interaction 

 between the organism and its environment. A lumin- 

 ous section of the lecture was devoted to showing that 

 supposing one knew the pre-Cambrian Rhizopod from 

 which all animals are descended, and knew it 

 thoroughly, yet one would not be able to foresee from 

 such knowledge all that was to follow. The history 

 was not really in the pre-Cambrian ancestor, for living 

 creatures, as they have evolved, have, so to speak, 

 worked time into their being, and evolution is con- 

 tinual creation. 



The last days of the formal meetings of the congress 

 were overcrowded with remarkable communications, 

 too numerous even to mention in a brief notice, but we 

 cannot refrain from remarking on the addresses given 



