Sections I and II. Amongst the stock of Gammarus chevreuxi which had been kept under Laboratory conditions for at least two years a small number of animals appeared in which the coloured retinal pigment was absent, whilst the white extra-retinal pigment remained. The experiments described in the present paper have shown that these eyes were of two different kinds.

Eyes of the first kind were derived from a stock which originated in a cross between Black-eyed and Red-eyed animals, and were degenerate and irregular in shape. Four animals of this kind appeared in one brood, and such eyes have since been seen only in direct descendants from these. Eyes of this kind were found to behave as simple Mendelian recessives to eyes showing coloured retinal pigment, whether that pigment was red or black, and they are referred to in this paper as “albino” eyes.

Of the many branches of biological enquiry which have occupied the attention of naturalists during the last twenty years the one which has perhaps yielded the most striking results, from a theoretical point of view, has been the study of heredity in plants and animals—the study of the laws according to which the characters of parents are transmitted to their descendants.

…Passing now to the special subject of my address to-night, I will ask your attention in the first place to some general aspects of our Sea Fisheries as a source of national food supply and to the general scientific investigations which have been undertaken in the hope that the yield of the harvest of the sea may be still further increased. In the second place a more detailed account will be attempted of some particular researches bearing upon these matters, which happen to have formed during the past few years the subject of my own special work. If in the course of my remarks you may seem to be asked to follow me in excessive detail into some of the more remote corners of the problems which arise, my excuse must be that, even at the risk of upsetting the balance of the picture as a whole, it is probably possible to speak to more purpose and with a better prospect of stimulating others to fresh efforts, by describing researches with which I have been personally concerned, than by a more general and better proportioned, but necessarily more superficial treatment of the whole subject.

At a time like the present, when the Empire we have inherited stands facing a crisis of its fate, when indeed the whole structure of civilization as we know it has seemed to sway, when that which generations of earnest thinkers have dreamt of as the progress of the race recoils before the forces it has itself unchained, it is difficult to restrain a feeling of incongruity in discussing any subject that has no obvious bearing on the greater problems of the hour. But I am convinced that we are following the right course in carrying on, with such help as remains available, the work of this Association, whose object is the advancement of Science, Literature and Art. In the short, swift cataracts of war, no less than in the gentler, steadier flow of peace, these matters of the mind have still their power.