May 14, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



729 



or can be made the subject of experimental 

 investigation. To what extent the colloidal 

 substances of cells, such as the mucilage dis- 

 solved in the sap, can be made use of, and how 

 this use may be modified by the acid or alka- 

 line content of the disperse medium is at pres- 

 ent almost or quite unknown. The great size 

 of tannin idioplasts and the imbibitional avid- 

 ity of their colloidal content may, it is quite 

 possible, be related, and it is similarly possi- 

 ble that the growth and therefore the size of 

 other cells may depend not only on the 

 " turgor " relations, but even more upon the 

 imbibition pressure exerted upon their walls. 

 The mucilage and other colloidal content of 

 desert succulents par excellence may in this 

 light take on greater significance in view of 

 Borowikow's work, cited by MacDougal. 



Much more of detail from this collection of 

 papers could be given with more ease than to 

 indicate, without giving an impression of 

 meagerness in the source, the most salient 

 points. Many people untaught in the thought 

 of the scientist have expected vast changes in 

 the surrounding country to follow the flooding 

 of a large desert-inclosed area. The emersed 

 bed of Blake Sea is, however, still a desert, and 

 as measurement and even more superficial ob- 

 servation shows, the evaporation from the many 

 square miles of water surface has had no small- 

 est effect upon any vegetation but that imme- 

 diately following recedence of the water itself. 

 A very short span of time and the desert is re- 

 stored to its own. But the opportunity of 

 seeing what does happen has fortunately been 

 seized, and we have in this review seen, it is 

 hoped, that a result of signal value has re- 

 warded. 



Francis E. Lloyd 



McGiiiL Univeesitt 



SCIENTIFIC BESEASCS AND SIGMA XI i 

 Before the chapter reports are presented, it 

 is my business for twenty minutes to address 

 you, yours to listen ; for Sigma Xi too expects 

 every man to do his duty. We have eaten; 



1 Eemarks by the president of the Society of the 

 Sigma Xi at the annual dinner given at the Uni- 

 versity of Pennsylvania on January 4, 1915. 



water has been served ; it is a pity that we can 

 not now be merry. For whatever may happen 

 to us, Sigma Xi will not die to-morrow. We 

 have long since passed through the dangerous 

 period of infancy; at the age of twenty-seven 

 the death-rate is but five per thousand. And 

 we surely are a chosen people; like the patri- 

 archs of old, the years of our life are measured 

 not by deeenniums but by centuries. 



Our first quarter century has indeed been a 

 period of marvelous growth and fruition. As 

 exhibited in the record and history admirably 

 compiled by our secretary, it is one of the 

 fairy tales of science, incredible if it were not 

 true. The beginnings at Cornell University 

 were small, but, like the zygote, they contained 

 the elements which in interaction with a fit 

 environment grew into the great organism, of 

 which each of us is one seven-thousandth. 

 Unlike the individuals of the species to which 

 we belong, our corporate grovrth does not stop 

 at the age of twenty-five, nor will senility fol- 

 low fifty years of activity. 



In a recent article an eminent American 

 statistician states that 30.7 per cent, of Ehode 

 Island native-born married Protestant mothers 

 are childless. The distinguished dean of a 

 great woman's college within a thousand miles 

 of Philadelphia in a chapel address to the stu- 

 dents said that it is not just to charge the de- 

 creasing birth rate to the higher education of 

 women; although the college had been estab- 

 lished only a few years, forty per cent, of its 

 alunmsB were married and sixty per cent, of 

 them had children. When birth-rate statistics 

 are so complicated, it may not be safe to state 

 that we are all the children of Henry Shaler 

 Williams. But this is true, though polyandry 

 appears on the records and we have certainly 

 had polygamous nursing. We may indeed re- 

 gard our leaders and each of us as somas of 

 the immortal germ plasm, which seeks the 

 light of truth: 



That light whose smile kindles the universe, 

 That beauty in which all things work and move. 



As a hand apart from the body is not a 

 hand, as a man apart from other men is not a 

 man, so a scientific man is not conceivable 



