September 3, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



303 



of certain pigments, but in other respects they 

 may be as potent as before. The albino does 

 not produce pigment, but there may be other 

 substances in the place of pigment that would 

 distinguish the albino as a positive variation 

 when judged by other standards. The animals 

 whose gametic formulas contain a number of 

 small letters are not necessarily more imper- 

 fect or perhaps I should say incomplete than 

 their congeners which carry a large number 

 of dominant characters. 



Of course there may be varieties due to 

 losses of germinal material. Considering the 

 complex mechanism of mitosis, and the op- 

 portunities afforded for the loss of chromatin 

 during this process, such variations are not 

 improbable a priori. But there is not the 

 slightest warrant in the fact of recessiveness 

 per se for the doctrine that all recessive varia- 

 tions are produced by this method. The origin 

 of so-called unit characters may depend, for 

 the most part, not upon germinal loss or gain, 

 but simply on transformation. Viewed in this 

 simple and natural way the appearance of a 

 new dominant character is not an event to be 

 marvelled at. Dominant and recessive charac- 

 ters not improbably owe their origin to much 

 the same causes. At least we do not know that 

 they do not. Concerning the real causes of 

 variations of any kind we know very little 

 more than we did when Darwin commented 

 on our profound ignorance of this subject. It 

 is therefore premature to pin our faith to any 

 particular theory of the origin of variation and 

 especially to draw far-reaching conclusions re- 

 garding evolution on the basis of such an in- 

 terpretation. We may conceive variability as 

 due to germinal losses or gains for the sake of 

 our formulas, and there may be little harm in 

 so doing so long as it is clearly realized that 

 the procedure is a purely arbitrary and 

 schematic method of recording certain facts 

 of inheritance. But when we make the serious 

 attempt to apply the conception to what actu- 

 ally takes place in the germ plasm we en- 

 counter a fruitful source of fallacies. 



S. J. Holmes 

 University op California 



ESNST GRIMSEELi 



On October 30, 1914, Ernst Grimsehl fell 

 near Langemarck in the bitter fighting along 

 the Tser line. Only two days before he had 

 received the iron cross. Although he was in 

 his fifty-fourth year, yet he responded volun- 

 tarily and full of enthusiasm to the call to the 

 colors as an " Oberleutnant der Landwehr." 

 On October 1 he marched with the 213th regi- 

 ment across the Belgian frontier. For only a 

 few weeks was he permitted to fight for his 

 country which he so dearly loved. He died, as 

 so many others at his side, without living to 

 see the victory which he so confidently hoped 

 for. 



In his death the German educational sys- 

 tem loses a personality which was unique in 

 its character and therefore can not be re- 

 placed. All his thoughts and efforts were di- 

 rected to this ideal of placing physics teaching 

 on a firmer basis and of bringing it nearer 

 and nearer to perfection. His friend, A. 

 Keferstein, has in the UnterricMsfldttern 

 sketched the character of his work with beauty 

 and conviction. He says in part : 



His preeminent manual dexterity and his thor- 

 ough knowledge of the instrument-maker's art, 

 which as a student he had gained in his vacation 

 days from the masters of the art, qualified him for 

 the creation of clean-cut models of apparatus. 

 These he tried out at every point till he had cor- 

 rected by his masterly hand their first faults and 

 made them respond to his every wish. 



Of his original inventive skill as an experi- 

 menter, numerous publications bear witness; 

 one must have watched him getting ready for 

 an experimental lecture such as he was wont 

 to give almost every year at the spring meet- 

 ing of the Association for the Promotion of 

 Instruction in Mathematics and the Natural 

 Sciences, in order to gain the secret of this 

 skill. He was tireless and enthusiastic in his 

 efforts to perfect his arrangements, often by 

 hours of labor in a strange place and in a 



1 Translated from Zeitsclirift fur den Physikal- 

 isclien nnd Chemisclien Unterricht, January, igi.^, 

 and read at the seventieth meeting of the Eastern 

 Association of Physios Teachers by N. Henry 

 Black. 



