The work described in this paper was begun at the Naples Zoological Station in the winter and spring of 1901, but the greater part of it was done during the year 1902, and, since the methods used in the earlier experiments were not entirely satisfactory, no record of them is included. The work was suggested by the papers of Vernon (5-9) on Echinoid hybrids, in which he concludes that the differences observed in certain cases between larvæ reared at different seasons, are due to variations in the prepotency of the parents caused by changes in the maturity of the sexual cells. If this is correct, it seemed possible that other conditions acting upon the eggs or spermatozoa might cause alterations in their prepotency, and the experiments were undertaken primarily to test this supposition. That differences in the time during which the genital cells had been kept might affect the extent to which the parental characters were transmitted, was suggested in a paper by Ewart (2) in 1901, and the same thing might be inferred from the tables attached to one of Vernon’s papers (9), although no mention is made of it in the text. The conclusion, however, arrived at from the work here described, is that, although the environmental conditions which affect the genital cells influence the form of the larva, yet there is no satisfactory evidence of a change of dominance caused by such conditions.
TASTE THRESHOLD STUDY OF AGNEYA AUSHADHI (CHITRAKA) COLLECTED IN TWO DIFFERENT SEASONS WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO ITS DRAVYA SANGRAHA KALA