May 10, 1912] 
which I have observed in a living condition 
without stains, the appearance being in this 
ease checked with stained preparations. The 
sperms were active and the head and tail 
wriggled in their characteristic manner as 
long as they were visible. The tail became 
shorter and shorter as the head swelled, but in 
none of my specimens did the tail-cytoplasm 
completely incorporate itself into the head. 
This is true, I believe, for Loeb and Ban- 
croft’s experiments. In other words, a com- 
pletely rounded out cell, like a spermatocyte, 
did not appear in these preparations. 
De Meyer succeeded in causing the heads to 
swell by growing the sperms in a dilute solu- 
tion of gelatin (gelatin sol); every indication 
pointed to the perfect imitation of the forma- 
tion of the pronuclear condition in a normally 
fertilized egg. It is of the greatest interest, 
too, to observe that the experiments made by 
De Meyer in acid solutions gave exactly the 
same result as colloidal solutions in general— 
that is, a swelling in acid media. 
These experiments and those of Loeb and 
Bancroft show the possibility of approaching 
the explanation of the behavior of the sperma- 
tozoon during fertilization upon physical- 
chemical grounds. Factors leading to mitosis 
should be determined and the various arti- 
ficial parthenogenetic reagents should be 
tried. 
I have recently determined, also, that if a 
trace of saponin be added to the water in 
which the spermatozoa of Cerebratulus lie, 
there is a slight cytolysis and swelling of the 
head of the spermatozoon, but the “tail” is 
not affected, apparently. Whether mitosis can 
be induced in this manner, as it can in the 
egg, in the formation of polar bodies, as I 
have elsewhere described, remains yet to be de- 
termined. Max Morse 
TRINITY COLLEGE, 
HARTFORD, CONN., 
April 10, 1912 
3T am under obligation to the officers of the 
biological laboratories of Yale University, Pro- 
fessors Harrison, Coe, Woodruff and Petrunke- 
vitch, for the opportunity to study living nemer- 
tean eggs and sperms. 
SCIENCE 
755 
SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 
RESEARCH WORKERS IN EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY, 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 
At the meeting of this society, held on February 
21, 1912, Dr. William N. Berg, of the Bureau of 
Animal Industry, gave a critical exposition of 
Zuntz’s theory in regard to the physical-chemical 
basis of striated muscle contraction, in which it 
was pointed out that this theory had many objec- 
tionable features. These may be summarized 
briefly as follows: 
(a) Lymph contains practically no carbon dioxid 
in the gaseous state. 
(6) Gases dissolved in water do not behave 
entirely like true solutes, and exert no osmotic 
pressure; exceptions are hydrochloric acid, am- 
monia and a few other gases. 
Accordingly, the carbon dioxid produced by 
muscle contraction can not exert any osmotic pres- 
sure, and, furthermore, it is not shown in Zuntz’s 
work that the walls of the muscle rods are imper- 
meable to carbon dioxid during the contraction 
phase. This is necessary, for otherwise osmotic 
equilibrium could not be brought about by the 
inflow of water alone; an outflow of carbon dioxid 
must take place. A further objection is that car- 
bon dioxid at the moment of its formation does not 
have a temperature of nearly 6000° C. 
At the March meeting, held on the 20th inst., 
Dr. William Salant, chief of the pharmacological 
laboratory of the Bureau of Chemistry, gave a 
brief résumé of the caffein investigations which 
were conducted in the Department of Agriculture, 
and which embrace studies on the effects of dif- 
ferent amounts of caffein upon the organism, with 
especial reference to the production of acute and 
chronie intoxication. Other factors, such as the 
influence of diet, age, season, etce., were considered. 
In conjunction with the tests, which were done 
with carnivorous and herbivorous animals, the rate 
of demethylation of caffein and the elimination of 
eaffein in the urine and gastro-intestinal canal 
were noted under normal and pathological condi- 
tions. 
In addition to the above, the results of experi- 
ments upon the effect of caffein upon the circula- 
tion, with particular regard to synergism and the 
antagonism of other drugs, were reported. 
Lewis W. FETZER 
1¢‘Die Kraftleistung des Tierkorpers; eine Fest- 
tede,’’? Kgl. Landw. Hochschule Berlin, 1908. 
