414 
SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 
parts plants play in the process. Green sea-weeds like Ulva rapidly 
remove the free ammonia, but slowly increase the albuminoid ammonia. 
Red sea-weeds like GeUdium cause a considerable increase in the albu- 
minoid ammonia, and usually in the free ammonia. Percolation through 
sand has some purifying effect, but this is increased greatly when there are 
diatoms and other Algae mixed with the sand, or when bacteria abound 
in the sand. Vernon worked along three lines, chemical, physiological, 
and bacteriological. The water was tested physiologically by allowing 
the fertilised ova of the sea-urchin, Strongylocentrotus lividus, to develop 
in it, and by determining the. change produced in the size of the larvae 
after eight days’ growth under various conditions. The bacterial quality 
of the water was tested by counting the number of colonies obtained by 
gelatin plate culture. As yet the results seem rather inconclusive. 
Scientific Method in Biology.* — Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell argues 
that the attainment of truth is the aim of research ; that the organic 
must not be treated as if it were inorganic ; that scientific research in 
biology must be based upon close and extensive observation of the vary- 
ing forms of animal life, under natural conditions, with post-mortem 
examination of the records left by health and disease ; and so on. The 
book is a calm and careful statement of what may be called the 
humanitarian position. 
Heredity and Instinct, f — Prof. C. Lloyd Morgan closes an inter- 
esting lecture on instinct and intelligence with the following well- 
weighed paragraph : — “ Heredity plays a double part. It provides, 
through natural selection or otherwise, an outline sketch of relatively 
definite behaviour, racial in value ; it provides also that necessarily 
indefinite plasticity which enables an animal to acquire and to utilise 
experience, and thus to reach adaptation to the circumstances of its indi- 
vidual life. It becomes, therefore, a matter of practical inquiry to 
determine the proportion which the one kind of hereditary legacy bears 
to the other. Observation seems to show that those organisms in which 
the environing conditions bear the most uniform relations to a mode of 
life that is relatively constant, are the ones in which instinct prepon- 
derates over intelligent accommodation ; while those in which we see 
the most varied interaction with complex circumstances show more 
adaptation of the intelligent type. And the growth of individual plas- 
ticity of behaviour in race-development would seem to be accompanied 
by a disintegration of the definiteness of instinctive response ; natural 
selection favouring rather the plastic animal capable of indefinitely 
varied accommodation than the more rigid type, whose adaptations are 
congenitally defined.” 
Litoral Pauna and Pisciculture at Marseilles.^: — Prof. A. E. Marion 
has made a detailed survey of the fisheries on the coasts of Marseilles, 
describing the different modes of capture, discussing the question of 
bait, suggesting possibilities of development, and inter alia , taking note 
of other than utilitarian aspects of the litoral fauna. 
* ‘ Scientific Method in Biology,’ London, 1898, 8vo, SO pp. 
t Journ. Roy. Inst. Great Britain, Jan. 1898, 13 pp. 
X Ann. Mus. d’Hist. Nat. Marseille, y. (1897) 386 pp. (153 figs.).] 
