660 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION I 
— 
from each other in psychology—the formation of habit, recognition, mental 
anticipation, and recollection. It is shown that the continuity between these 
processes or forms in the development of memory in the child is paralleled by a 
similar continuity, and by a like gradual advance from one to the other, in the 
corresponding behaviour of animals. The chief question dealt with is that of 
the existence of mental imagery or ‘free ideas’ in animals, their biological 
function, their origin, and the tests that indicate their presence. 
6. Note on the Relation between the Effects of Strophantine and the 
Salts of Ringer Solution. By Professor Dr. O. Lozwt. 
A heart perfused with a Ringer solution without lime stops much earlier 
than when perfused with a Ringer solution without lime and without potassium. 
By adding strophantine to a Ringer solution without lime the heart works much 
longer (about two hours against 30 seconds) than without strophantine, but adding 
strophantine to a Ringer solution without lime and without potassium the heart 
beats much shorter (only 30 minutes against 1 hour 30 minutes) than without 
strophantine. 
Therefore, there must exist a functional antagonism between the effects of 
potassium and strophantine: strophantine counteracts the potassium effect, so 
added to a Ringer solution without lime it restores the heart; and potassium 
counteracts the strophantine effect, so strophantine added to a Ringer solution 
without lime and without potassium weakens the heart. 
7. The Prevention of Mental Degeneracy. By R. R. Rentoun, M.D. 
The paper discussed the present amount of mental degeneracy, and the pre- 
vention of mental degeneracy by the following methods : (1) Compulsory notifica- 
tion of all mental and physical degenerates. (2) Compulsory and voluntary 
surgical sterilisation of mental and physical degenerates. (3) Pre-nuptial medical 
certificate of good physical’and mental health. (4) Making it illegal for any 
person to issue a permit to marry without obtaining a certificate of good 
health from the applicants. (5) Making it illegal for any clergyman, registrar, 
or other person to join in marriage any physical or mental degenerate unless 
the woman is over fifty years of age, or unless sterilised. (6) Making it illegal 
for any sane person to marry a degenerate, and to make such marriage null 
and void. (7) ‘Taxation of bachelors. (8) Taxation of sterile marriages. 
(9) Proceeds to go to couples with income under £450 per annum who bring up 
the largest number of physically and mentally healthy children. (10) Petition- 
ing her Majesty to institute a Royal Order of maternity. (11) Physical 
degeneration. 
8. A Plea for Regeneration. By Rev. James Marcuanr. 
Since the discussion at the British Association meeting at Cambridge im 1905 
the subject of physical degeneration has been kept continuously before pu‘ 
-attention. There’ is another paper in this Section upon it. May the writer 
humbly crave permission simply to sound another note? His plea is vague and 
idealistic, but he hopes it is at least opportune. De-generation, whatever form 
it takes—fatty, or generally physical—whether attacking the individual or the 
race, in a physiological or mystical sense, is not peculiar to this age. And the 
fact of re-generation—by which the writer desires to oust the unfortunately too 
easily credited belief in degeneration—is well known to science. The local death 
of some tissues, for instance, as the writer first heard his revered tutor, the late 
Professor T. H. Huxley, say, is often followed by ‘regeneration.’ Regeneration 
in the animal and vegetable kingdoms—for exampie, the olive tree possesses 
almost exhaustless capacities of reconstruction—and even in men and races, in 
no merely metaphorical sense, is an old truth. The term regeneration covers a 
series of facts as well recognised in physiology as in religion, which has claimed 
peculiar use of the doctrine from time immemorial. 
But if the belief in regeneration is not novel, the application of it to the race 
