670 OBITUARY NOTICE. 



and embryology of the Calcarea, especially those dealing with 

 the origin and development of the triradiate spicules, or, rather, 

 spicule-systeins, as he showed them to be. The conclusions at 

 which he arrived as the result of these investigations were of a 

 startling and wholly unexpected nature. His most important 

 memoirs on Sponges were produced while he occupied the chair 

 of Zoology at University College, London, and it was, I know, no 

 small grief to him to have to abandon these researches, at 

 any rate to a large extent, when he accepted the newly created 

 chair of Protozoology in the University of London and trans- 

 ferred his headquarters to the Lister Institute of Preventive 

 Medicine at Chelsea. 



While at University College he had already won a great reputa- 

 tion as a student of the Sporozoa, a group of Protozoa which in 

 recent years has assumed such immense imj>ortance from the 

 medical standpoint, and at the Lister Institute the parasitic 

 Protozoa necessarily claimed his chief attention. Here his wonder- 

 ful mastery of microscopical technique stood him in good stead, 

 and his exquisitely illustrated memoirs on the Trypanosomes, 

 published in The Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, 

 would alone form a lasting monument to his industry and skill. 

 His work in this direction took him far afield, for even before he 

 resigned his chair at University College he had visited Uganda 

 as a member of the Royal Society's Commission on Sleeping 

 Sickness. His Introduction to the Study of the Protozoa, with 

 special reference to the parasitic forms, published in 1912, will long 

 remain the standard treatise on this most important subject. 



The amount of hard work that Minchin managed to get through 

 is marvellous. In spite of his delicate health and his preoccupa- 

 tion with original research of the most intricate and difficult 

 character, and in addition to his numerous duties as a teaching 

 professor, he managed to find time to take an active part in the 

 work of scientific societies. His zeal and energy as President of 

 the Quekett Microscopical Club are fresh in the memories of all 

 of us, but he was also a Vice-President of the Zoological Society 

 and latterly Zoological Secretary of the Linnean Society. 



Minchin' s last contribution to science was his Presidential 

 Address to the Zoological Section of the British Association at 

 Manchester, in September last. Those of us who were present 

 on that occasion knew that the end was not far off, and it was with 



