SKETCH OF SIR C. WYVILLE THOMSON. 693 



the gelatine may be wanted to provide for the proper nourishment of 

 the coatings of the fibers and cells of nerve and muscle, and that a 

 lack iu this provision may bring about an abnormal disposition to in- 

 voluntary action in nerve and muscle. I believe that these coatings 

 are charged as the walls of a Leyden jar are charged during the state 

 of rest, and that the degree of this charge and the indisposition to dis- 

 charge is in proportion to the integrity of these coatings ; in other 

 words, I believe that the discharge which attends upon and produces 

 this state of action, voluntary and involuntary, in nerve and muscle 

 alike, is more likely to happen in the case where these coatings are in- 

 sufficiently developed than in the case where they are sufficiently de- 

 veloped ; and, so believing, you will easily understand why I think 

 that gelatine may really be of high value as an article of food. The 

 Practitioner. 



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SKETCH OF SIR C. WYVILLE THOMSON. 



THE name of Sir Charles Wyville Thomson is inseparably asso- 

 ciated with the first explorations of the depths of the ocean, and 

 with having proved that abundant forms of animal life lived there 

 where it had been believed that only a few scattering organisms were 

 able to maintain an isolated and precarious existence. Professor 

 Thomson was born at Bonsyde, Linlithgowshire, Scotland, March 5, 

 1830, and died on the 10th of March, 1882. His father was a surgeon 

 in the service of the East India Company, and spent most of his life 

 abroad. His grandfather was a distinguished clergyman of Edin- 

 burgh ; and his great-grandfather was " Principal Clerke of Chancel- 

 lary " in the time of the Rebellion of 1745. He went to school at Mer- 

 chiston Castle Academy, which was then conducted by Mr. Charles 

 Chalmers, a brother of the eminent Rev. Dr. Chalmers, after which he 

 entered the medical course of the University of Edinburgh, in 1845. 

 After three years of study here, he began to feel the effects of over- 

 work, and, as a means of gaining a year's rest, we are told, he took 

 the lectureship on botany in Queen's College, Aberdeen. In the fol- 

 lowing year he was appointed to lecture on the same subject in Maris- 

 chal College and University. In 1853 he was chosen to the professor- 

 ship of Natural History in the Queen's College, Cork, and a year after 

 that to the chair of Mineralogy and Geology in the Queen's College, 

 Belfast. He distinguished himself from the very beginning of his 

 active career as an investigator among the lower forms of animal life. 

 His first published paper appears to have been one on the application 

 of photography to the compound microscope, which was read before 

 the British Association in 1850. While at Aberdeen he published 

 several papers on the Polyzoa and Sertularian Zoophytes of Scotland, 



