divided into twelve life-saving districts, designated by number, beginning with Maine on the Atlantic and ending with Washington on the Pacific. Each district is in charge of a superintendent chosen for his knowledge of the subject, business capacity, and executive ability. The districts are subdivided into stations, known by the names of their localities, and situated with regard to the special dangers of the coast. They are of two kinds: complete life-saving stations, and houses of refuge. In all there are about two hundred and forty stations of both kinds, but some of them are not yet fully completed and manned. A majority of them are on the Atlantic coast; ten on the shores of Maine and New Hampshire; six in Massachusetts, where the Humane Society provides whatever other service is needed; thirty-nine on Long Island; forty in New Jersey; seventeen between Cape Henlopen and Cape Charles; twenty-three between Cape Henry and Cape Hatteras; one station and ten houses of refuge in Florida; eight on the Gulf of Mexico; fortynine on the Lakes; and twelve on the Pacific coast. Every station is in charge of an oflicer who is really the captain of the crew, but whose technical designation of keeper is a survival from the time when only one person was constantly employed and depended on volunteers for help. The crews are technically known as surfmen, and are selected by the keeper from the best men in the neighborhood. The crews are under the control of the keepers, and above these are the district superintendent, who visits the stations quarterly; the assistant inspector, who makes monthly rounds; and the general inspector, who reports periodically to headquarters in Washington. The statements of the operations of the service show that it has been very effective in saving life and property. The entire loss of lives on all the coasts of the United States under the present system since 18 VI has been only thirty-eight in excess of the loss on the Long Island and New Jersey coasts alone during the preceding twenty years. This efficiency is largely due to the fact that politics has not yet intruded into the service, while the principle of choosing and keeping the best men for their work has been steadfastly adhered to.
Organic Variation a Chemical Problem.—The laws of chemism are applied by Prof. A. E. Dolbear to explain the phenomena of protoplasmic growth and change. Since the discovery of the mechanical equivalent of heat there has been no alternative but to suppose those phenomena to be due to motion. Having shown that such motions of matter as constitute sound, heat, magnetism, and the rest, all produce fields external to themselves, and that within such fields other bodies are brought into similar states of position or of motion or both, the author would apply the same principle to protoplasm and cell structure. "Imagine a cell with any degree of complexity, surrounded by material such as it is itself composed of, and what should one look for to take place if not that the same kind of a structure should be reproduced? When this happens, we say growth has taken place, and it is attributed to life. As the new cell is similar to the old one that furnished the specific conditions for its development, we say it has inherited its form and functions. The bearings of this upon the fundamental problems of biology are apparent. If the foregoing be true, heredity is explained as much as inductive magnetism is, and is no more mysterious. . . . Suppose that in such a complex molecule as protoplasm a single atom of a different substance should accidentally become imbedded, either as a constituent or not, it would bring its field along with it necessarily, and the resultant field of the whole would be modified. It could not be what it would be in the absence of this new constituent, and consequently the reaction upon other matter in its neighborhood would be different, and the next organic molecule formed would need to be a little differently organized. Mechanical conditions would necessitate it. Again, if energy, radiant or conducted, should act for a short time upon one part of a molecule, it might easily bring about an exchange of positions among some of the less stable constituents without other disturbance, and this too would result in a change of the configuration of the field and the direction of growth. Every change in the collocation and motions among molecules exhibits itself in changed properties. Such conditions might properly be spoken of as changes in the environment, but it is mo-
