774 HEroRT — 1884. 



supervision. As man by factitiously arranging the means at his disposal, iii 

 accordance with his needs and tastes, institutes systems of artificial co-ordination, 

 so the spontaneous adjustment of organic activities in subjection to and conformity 

 with prevailing correlated tendencies and requirements constitutes a system of 

 natural co-ordination. 



In the elaborate establishment of specific organic products natural co-ordination 

 performs the two distinct though complemental offices of a directive and a selective 

 function, the former determining each temporary step in the process, the latter 

 deciding which, out of many possible courses, will be permanently or successively 

 adopted. In a dependent evolving system, with abundant accommodations, pro- 

 visions, and protection, it might remain a matter of indifference what number and 

 kind of forms were produced, as all would be alike preserved ; each succeeding 

 phase being simply a direct product of antecedent stages, without the intervention 

 of any subsequent eliminating process. 



Here the principles of co-ordination could only have directive scope ; but in 

 a circumscribed station, with limited supplies and liability to invasion, as soon as 

 the rate of production would exceed the means of support, co-ordination would 

 assume a selective role, submitting the various competitors for the different avail- 

 able positions to prescribed tests, accepting such as would conform with required 

 standards, and rejecting all relatively unsuitable or incompetent ones. Organisation 

 seems to have been planned and conducted according to some such method and 

 design ; its potentialities constituting an incalculable fund of transmutable and 

 genetic material, affording the principle of co-ordination enormous resources where- 

 on to operate, so as to render possible the realisation of results practically incon- 

 ceivable. Such being, apparently, the simple natural means and methods 

 employed in elaborating all the wonderfully complex and diversified products of 

 organic evolution, the primordial germ or germs having virtually involved not oily 

 all past, present, and future developmental achievements, but also a practically 

 infinite store of unrealised possibilities ; the principle of co-ordination submitting 

 originally indefinite potentialities to definite arrangements of facilities and restraints ; 

 thus directing the course of development into innumerable special channels, and 

 from the multifarious types evolved selecting such as provisionally conform with 

 their various conventional requirements ; while the marvellous progress revealed in 

 the past history of these operations affords most encouraging assurance of incon- 

 ceivably higher realisations in the future course towards the relatively approxim- 

 able, though perhaps never absolutely attainable, state of ultimate universal 

 perfection, 



Subsection of Physiology. 



1. On the Coagulation of Blood. 

 By Professor H. N. Martin and W. H. Howell. 



The blood of the Slider Terrapin, a turtle easily obtainable in Baltimore, had! 

 been used for a number of experiments, the object of which was to determine- 

 whether the views entertained by Hammersten or by Schmidt were most reliable. 

 The general conclusions went to show that the views of Hammersten were more in 

 accordance with the results of these observers. 



2. On the Blood of Liraulus Polyphemus. By Francis Gotch, B.Sc, 

 and Joseph P. Laws, F.0.8. 



Comparatively few observations have previously been made on the blood of the 

 king crab (Limulus polyph em us), the most important being those of Genth. 1 The 

 fact which his researches brought out — namely, that the blood contained a com- 



1 Genth, Annalen der Chemie und Pliarmacie, 3852, p. OS. 



