Notes and Comments. ic^y 



aiiizan. There is too great a tendency to think in symbols 

 and to write in shorthand. We have failed to cultivate 

 sufficiently the art of expression and neglected too much the 

 literary side of education. He blames the Victorians, however, 

 for not realising that Mendel was living amongst them, and 

 shows that the merit of the discovery of the greatness of Mendel's 

 work belongs to our generation, and that while we must give 

 to the Victorians the higher need of culture, to us, perhaps, 

 belongs the greater perspicacity. If, he says, the greatest gift 

 which an experimental science may receive is that of a new, 

 serviceable, general method, then to no man are biologists 

 more indebted than to Mendel, for such a method he gave to 

 our science. 



MENDELISM. 



From this it was an easy step to Mendelism, which 

 formed the major part of his address. He gave an in- 

 teresting account of recent work on pigmentation in flowers, 

 dealing especially with the peculiarities of the two races of 

 white flowered varieties which occur in the Chinese Primrose, 

 Sweet William, and Sweet Peas, and their behaviour when 

 crossed with coloured forms ; also the distribution of oxydase 

 and peroxydase in plant tissues and the part they play in the 

 formation of Authocyan pigments. Plants subjected to normal 

 illumination possess less oxydase than those kept in darkness 

 and after exposure for one or two days to darkness, plants 

 contain more peroxydase than those kept under normal 

 conditions of illumination. He suggests that in these vari- 

 ations in oxydase content we may discover therein the means 

 whereby many of' the phenomena of periodicity exhibited by 

 plants are maintained and regulated, e.g., diurnal and noc- 

 turnal positions of leaves, also the phenomena seen in such 

 species as Hippolyte varians, which roll up their brilliant 

 chromatophores at night and assume a sky-blue colour. When 

 daylight comes they put on their day-time dress by spreading 

 out the pigment of their chromatophores in far-reaching 

 superficial networks. The speculation may be permitted that 

 light and darkness may work these wonders through the 

 control of chemical agents such as oxydases. 



The Royal Horticultural Society has awarded its gold medal to Prof. 

 Newstead, of the University of Liverpool, for his exhibit of insects in- 

 jurious to cultivated plants, at the Roj-al International Horticultural 

 Exhibition. 



Referring to I\Ir. J. K. Caird's gift of ;^io,ooo to the British Association, 

 the Dundee Evening Telegraph stated ' Prof. Schafer will admit that from 

 a British Association point of view, ]VIr. J. K. Caird's demonstration of the 

 spontaneous production of sponduliks is more important than the pro- 

 phesies concerning possibilities of spontaneous generation.' 



1912 Oct. I. 



