more or less unlike the normal form, according to the species. In this instance it grows larger, and the front half of its oval body becomes sparsely granular. It swims with great rapidity, and goes almost immediately into the midst of a group of the ordinary forms. One of these becomes attached to it, and the two swim together, their flagella moving in concert. But it is soon manifest that the substance of the smaller form is melting into the larger, until in a short time "either is" wholly "melted into other;" but there is no loss of action for about two minutes, when the flagella fall off, and a clear sub-oval globule, perfectly inactive, falls to the floor of the stage. It remains inactive, undergoing no discoverable change for thirty-six hours; and then it bursts, emitting an incalculable host of minute spores, or generic products, which under observation rapidly change. They are, when first seen, semi-opaque, globular points; but they rapidly lose their opacity and elongate, passing through successive stages of growth, until the full characters of the normal adult are attained, when they begin almost immediately to pass through the self-division into many, which I before described. This is a life cycle typical of the entire group. It thus becomes apparent that the teeming hosts of these putrefactive organisms, as a group, containing the minutest forms accessible to us in Nature, are as dependent upon parents for their continuity as the most elevated organic forms. That there is no more caprice in their vital activities than there is in the Vermes or the Insecta. Their life cycles are as definable as those of a crustacean or a bird. No vital phenomena not to be found amongst higher and larger organisms are discoverable in this minute field of living things. I have been enabled further to demonstrate that the spores of these forms can, on the average, resist the action of heat better than the adult in the proportion of 11 to 5, and this will explain the origin of these forms in hermetically closed vessels which had been heated to points demonstrably destructive of the adult. The forms have arisen again, because although all the adult and germinating forms were destroyed, yet the fresh spore was not. But beyond all this, our more recent studies with the finest of our recent lenses have carried us into still profounder depths. I have pointed out that the majority of these forms are nucleated. For many years it has been held by biologists that this minute interior body had profound functions; and the most advanced biologists are making rapid progress in the study of the nucleus and its changes, both in animal and vegetable cells. But in these minute organisms, which cannot be proved to be either distinctly animal or distinctly vegetable, the problem of the nucleus presents itself in its most initial form. But it could only be studied by the aid of such lenses as have been within our reach during the last few years. By a series of continued and close observations I have been enabled to demonstrate that the nucleus of the putrefactive organisms is the origin and centre of all the higher activities that distinguish their life cycles. The spore, or germ, appears but an undeveloped nucleus; and when the nucleus has attained its full dimensions in size, there is a visible pause in growth, in order that what we can now demonstrate as its internal structural development may be accomplished. When this is the case, the body substance grows, as it were, from the nucleus; from it too the flagella spring. In the same way it is, by a complex and beautiful series of delicate activities in the nucleus, that the wonderful act of fission is initiated before the body, as a whole, is at all affected; while all the profound changes that go with fertilization and the production of germs, are a series of correlated activities, due, at the beginning at least, wholly to the nucleus. Thus in an organism that in its greatest linear measurement is, say the ten-thousandth of an inch, the nucleus would be but the one-twelfth of this at most, and yet it is in that vital atom that the great life processes arise. Moreover, the enormous multitude, rapid reproduction, and minute size of these forms make them specially suitable subjects for the study of the influence of changed environment, and the possibility of demonstrating with living forms the great Darwinian law of adaptation and survival. I cannot enter for one moment into my methods of research,t but a continuous series of observations, extending practically over between nine and ten years, have shown that these minute forms, which are normally found at a temperature of from 60° to 65° Fah., can by delicate thermostatic arrangements-slow increments of heat applied with close and constant scrutiny of the immediate results on the organismsbe induced in the course of seven years to endure, and flourish in, a continuous heat of 157° Fah., and by being *Journ. Roy. Micro. Soc. ser. ii. vol. vi. President's Address. suddenly plunged into fluid at 60° Fah. are destroyed; while, as a matter of course, forms taken from fluids at 60° Fah., and placed in one with a temperature of 150° Fah., or even 140° Fah., are wholly destroyed. There is much that compels reflection in all this splendid power and activity in so minute a domain. But you will note that it is only a closer and finer record of methods in Nature that is here revealed. Although we appear to be lifting the very veil that hides the sanctum and mystery of life, it is not so. We are no nearer to the solution of the problem of how life results from its component elements, in the monad than in the man. But the value of such details is not in and by themselves; their meaning is only discoverable by a comprehensive light thrown from all the Biological sciences enabling us to discover how, or whether, they adjust themselves to, and take their place with, other kindred phenomena, and thus give us a wider basis for generalization, or a more definite index to the vital processes pertaining to the living and multiplying cells, of which the simpler and the most complex forms of life are composed and enabled to multiply. Obituary Notices. COMPILED BY THE REV. W. HARPLEY, HON. SECRETARY OF THE ASSOCIATION. (Read at Plympton, July, 1887 ) I. CAPTAIN HENRY BATHURST was born at 83, Gloucester Place, Portman Square, London, on the 1st July, 1832, and was the only child of Lieut.-Colonel Bathurst, Scots Fusilier Guards, and his wife, Emily Villebois, daughter of Henry Villebois, Esq., Marham, Norfolk. Captain Bathurst was educated at Sandhurst, and gazetted second lieutenant in the 23rd Royal Welsh Fusiliers on the 15th June, 1850; was promoted first lieutenant 21st November, 1851, and captain, December, 1854. He served in the Crimea, and was severely wounded in the right arm at the battle of the Alma. For this he received the Crimean medal and clasp (Alma), also the Turkish medal. In 1858 he was appointed A.D.C. to the present Marquis of Normanby, in Canada, and served in that capacity until 1860. From 1861 to 1871 he served in the auxiliary forces, when he retired from active service. Captain Bathurst married Amy, fifth daughter of the late Bernard Granville, Esq., of Wellesbourne Hall, Warwick, by whom he had eight children; viz., four sons and four daughters. For some time he resided at Northcote, Teignmouth, and while there, in 1882, he became a member of the Association. In 1884 he took up his residence at Springhill, Frome, Somerset, and from that time to the beginning of his fatal illness he largely interested himself in the public life of the town. He was formerly a Poor Law Guardian, a member of the Local Board, and for some time a churchwarden of St. John's Church. During his residence at Frome he won the esteem of all classes; his sterling personal qualities endeared him to all with whom he came in contact, and he was deservedly beloved for his charitable disposition. He died, after a protracted illness, on Sunday, the 5th September, 1886, at the age of 54 years. II. VICE-ADMIRAL E. J. BEDFORD was a Cornishman, having been born at St. Neot, near Liskeard, in 1810. In the early part of his career he served on the Pacific and Newfoundland station. In 1832 he joined the Home Survey, and from that time was employed continuously on the Surveys of the West Coast of England and Scotland, until his retirement from active service in 1869. More recently—about ten years ago-he was employed in the hydrographical department by the Admiralty. Apart from his strictly professional work, Vice-Admiral Bedford was known as an ardent geologist and conchologist, and to the last maintained correspondence on these subjects with many scientific men of the day. He was elected a member of the Torquay Natural History Society on 10th November, 1875, having become a member of this Association a few months previously. He died July 1st, 1887, at Fairlawn, Paignton, where he had resided during the last seventeen years of his life, and where he was highly esteemed by all who knew him. III. ARTHUR CHAMPERNOWNE, M.A., was a member of one of the oldest families of the County of Devon, perhaps of the West of England, his ancestors through many generations having occupied the ancient manorial residence of Dartington Hall, near Totnes. Mr. Champernowne was educated at Eton, and at Trinity College, Oxford, and was a Justice of the Peace for Devon. He was made a Fellow of the Geological Society in 1868, and was elected a member of the Council in February, 1887; he devoted very great attention to the geology of his native county, and was regarded as a high authority on that subject. He joined the Association in 1866, and subsequently, in 1878, compounded as a life member. In 1876, at the Ashburton meeting, he filled the office of Vice-President; and again in 1880, at the Totnes meeting, he held the same office. His great kindness in throwing open his fine old place and beautiful grounds on both these occasions for the inspection of the members of the Association, and his liberal hospitality, will long be remembered. On the former occasion he read to those present a carefully prepared and accurate "Historical Sketch of Dartington, and Notices of the Chief Architectural Points at the Hall," which was listened to with the most lively interest. |