Abstract
THE eleventh annual congress of the South-Eastern Union of Scientific Societies was held at Eastbourne on June 6–9 at the invitation of the local natural history society. On Wednesday evening, June 6, the retiring president, Prof. Flinders Petrie, opened the proceedings and gave up his chair to Dr. Francis Darwin, who delivered the presidential address. The title of the latter was “Periodicity,” and in it Dr. Darwin pointed out that one of the most striking features of living things is their periodic or rhythmic character. Life itself may be described as a rhythm made up of alternate destruction and reconstruction. Protoplasm—“the physical basis of life”—is alternately falling to pieces by a degradation into simpler compounds and rebuilding itself from the food materials supplied.
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The South-Eastern Union of Scientific Societies . Nature 74, 161–162 (1906). https://doi.org/10.1038/074161a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/074161a0