208 The British Association in South Africa. 
Johannesburg. 
The sectional meetings were held in the C.S.A. Railway Offices. 
Tuesday, August 29th. The President of the section, Mr. 
Harold Wager, F.R.S., gave his address “On Some Problems of 
Cell Structure and Physiology.” He first briefly traced the history 
of the study of cytology, from the 17th Century to the present time, 
showing how the earlier ideas regarding the cell and the relative 
importance of its parts have gradually changed. “ It is, however,” 
to quote from the address, “ mainly to the researches of the last 
thirty years that we owe our knowledge of the many complex cell- 
activities at work in living organisms, and we are still only just on 
the fringe of the great problems which cytology has to solve.” 
Taking the cell of the higher plants, the President discussed the 
nature of the various structures which together constitute the proto¬ 
plast of the living cell; dealing in turn with the cytoplasm, nucleus, 
nucleolus, chloroplast, centrosome and other cell organs. 
One very interesting feature of the address was the description 
of a number of experiments (most of them Mr. Wager’s own) 
which show that many of the characteristic appearances and 
activities of the cell, can be imitated artificially. Thus, if a 
mixture of olive oil, alcohol and water be poured into a petrie dish, 
its granular appearance is at first comparable to that of a resting 
nucleus. As the alcohol evaporates, however, currents are set up 
which result in the rearrangement of the oil globules in such a 
way as to closely imitate the prophases of nuclear division. 
Similarly, artificial asters can be produced by dropping alcohol or 
turpentine on to smoked glass, while the oil-foam experiments of 
Butschli are too well known to need more than a passing reference. 
But, in spite of the suggestiveness of these experiments, Mr. Wager 
remarks that “without admitting the necessity of anything akin to 
a special vital force, we are compelled to admit that vital phenomena 
do not at present admit of a merely mechanical explanation.” 
Referring to the difficulties of interpretation when dealing with 
dead fixed cells, Mr. Wager pointed out that so far comparatively 
little progress has been made in the elucidation of the structure of 
the living cell. He mentioned in this connection the suggestion that 
has been made to utilize the ultra-violet rays, to which chromatin 
and certain other substances are opaque, in researches of this kind. 
Finally the address dealt with the nuclei of the lower plants, 
and with the problem of the evolution of the nucleus. The 
suggestion was put forward that there were originally “ two distinct 
