Botany at the forthcoming British Association. 135 
By various causes, as by drugs, senility, accumulation of the pro¬ 
ducts of assimilation, etc., the power of assimilating can be much 
reduced below the normal. Now these causes affect the protoplasm 
rather than the chlorophyll, and it would be expected that the first, 
non-vital, stage would be unimpaired by them. Formaldehyde 
should then accumulate faster than the protoplasm could deal with 
it and poisoning should result; which however does not happen. If 
formaldehyde can be accumulated, without reversion, in some form, 
setting in, so as to “poison” the enzyme of a chloroformed cell; 
a fortiori it can accumulate so as to poison the protoplasm of a 
cell which is only condensing it at a sluggish rate. 
The researches that we have been considering are also dealt 
with by Meldola in the first part of his lucid and useful Presidential 
Address to the Chemical Society. Reference will be found thereto 
a quantity of literature dealing with the purely chemical side of this 
important question. 
The greater part of this Address is, however, devoted to the 
chemistry of the condensation of formaldehyde to sugar, a field in 
which, thanks to the researches of Emil Fischer, the chemist is 
well ahead of the biologist and can give him valuable indications. 
Among many other significant pieces of knowledge it is pointed out 
that we now know that such a gentle katalytic agent as Calcium 
carbonate can start the condensation of formaldehyde, so that we 
come near to such agents as may be found in the living cell. 
Meldola urges the general view that a number of different 
organic substances, and not sugars only, may possibly arise as the 
result of photo-synthesis in the green cell. 
F. F. B. 
BOTANY AT THE FORTHCOMING MEETING 
OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 
fl^HE meetings of Section K at York from Thursday, August 2nd 
; to Tuesday, August 7th, under the Presidency of Professor 
F. W. Oliver, F.R.S., will be organised on the lines that have 
become usual during the last few years. At least three of the 
Sessions of the Section will be devoted to special topics of current 
interest, the proceedings in each opening with a general paper or 
address dealing with the topic as a whole, followed by more special 
