42 PEOCEEDINGS OF THE 



Koelliker's visits to our Island were frequent, and from the 

 outset, while he was quite a young professor, he was received with 

 <i distinguished welcome. This was in great measure due to the 

 Pacinian corpuscles. Koelliker, it should be explained, after having 

 been a favourite pupil of Henle, began liis official life as prosector to 

 that eminent anatomist at Ziirich. In this employment he happened 

 one day to be examining the intestine of a cat for lymphatic vessels, 

 wlien his attention was caught by some peculiar bodies with a pearly 

 lustre. These he showed to Henle, who examined them with 

 him under the microscope, and said at once that such bodies were 

 described in a work he had just received from the Italian anatomist 

 Pacini. The professor and his prosector then in amicable concert 

 examined these organs in man and a series of other animals, and 

 gave the first exact description of them, after discovering in them 

 the nerves which Pacini had not seen, a success which is described 

 as easy in the case of the cat, but more difficult in the human 

 subject. Their joint treatise appeared in 1844. In the following 

 year Koelliker, now himself a professor, journeyed to London. 

 He sums up his stay there as " very interesting, often pleasant, 

 but on the whole very fatiguing." The fact was that he com- 

 pressed into a few weeks the sight-seeing and experiences which 

 perhaps not many Londoners compass in a lifetime. He was 

 taken about not only to museums, but to docks, exchanges, ware- 

 houses, bazaars, galleries, gardens, and country-houses. It rained 

 invitations to the breakfasts, Avhich were in that day fashionable, 

 and to dinners which at that epoch lasted, he says, from six 

 o'clock to eleven ! AVith these engagements were intermingled 

 soirees scientific and social, dances at Alraack's and elsewhere, 

 and a presentation at Court. Amid tliis whirl of amusement he 

 carried out the pi-incipal object of his journey, which was to have 

 intercourse with all our most prominent men of science. They 

 gave him a ready and genial reception, even the jealous reserve of 

 Owen being in this instance overcome. In colloquies on matters 

 of professional interest and in demonstrations with the micro- 

 scope, it is clear that the visitor and his hosts found reciprocal 

 and appreciative satisfaction. 



On Koelliker's services as one of the chief pioneers in the 

 modern development of microscopical and microtomical inves- 

 tigation, as an ingenious, active, and inspiring teacher, as a 

 luminous writer on histology and many other branches of com- 

 parative anatomy, it is unnecessary to enlarge. It may be of 

 interest here to give, as nearly as may be in his own words, the 

 summary of his views on the doctrine of descent. He insists that 

 the process of inheritance can only be understood through tlie 

 phenomena of generation. Tne generating organisms transmit 

 to the generated a morphologically definite substance of typical 

 composition, on whose operations the \^'hole conformation of the 

 geneiMted offspring depends. This heritable matter (Niigeli's 

 idioplasma) is contained in the germinal vesicles of eggs and in 



