68 I'JiOLEKUlNGS or THE 



and hero were laid tlie foundations of his scientific career, his 

 early collections and his nlmost precocious observations on the 

 animals and birds of India, reuiaining fresh in his remarkable 

 memory and contributing not a little to the success and com- 

 pleteness of his later work. lie took an Exhibition at Keble 

 College, Oxford, and though a finished and keen classical scholar, 

 he took a science degree with iionours in zoology in 1890. He 

 was av\'arded the University Scholarship at Naples, and after- 

 wards the Eadcliffe Fellowship. The beauty and perfection of 

 his cytological microscopic preparations were always remarkable, 

 and whilst at Naples he prepared a most wonderful series of 

 slides showing the development and cell-division of the blasto- 

 derm of the cuttlefish. These researches he never published, 

 as he immediately turned his attention to the Spongiadae and the 

 mode of formation of sponge-spicules, publishing the results of 

 his observations in many papers of the highest scientific value, 

 over a long period. In 1893 he became a Fellow of Merton 

 College, and spent many years visiting the Marine Biological 

 Stations at Plymouth, Eoscoff, Banyuls, and Naples, and working 

 in the laboratories of Prof. Biitschli (at Heidelberg), vaIiosc work 

 on Protoplasm and Microscopic Forms he translated (London 

 1894, Black), and of Prof. R. Hertwig (in Munich). He was 

 assistant to Sir E. Ray Lankester and IDemonstrator in Com- 

 parative Anatomy at Oxford for some years before he became 

 lecturer in biology at Guy's Hospital, which post he held for a 

 short time before succeeding Weldon as Jodrell Professor of 

 Zoology at University College, London, in 1899. Seven years 

 later the Chair of Protozoology was founded in the University of 

 London, Minchin was culled to fill the post of Professor, and 

 assumed the direction of the new department of Protozoolog}^ at 

 the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine at Chelsea, wdiere, 

 as Prof. Goodrich has said, " he pursued his researches wath 

 untiring industry, and reached those brilliant results win'ch have 

 made his name famous among protozoologists the world nver." 

 He married in 1903 Miss Florence Mtiud Fontain, who survives 

 liim. In 1910 he was awarded the Trail Medal of our Society, 

 and in 1911 became a Fellow of the Eoyal Society. 



His first scientific paper " On a new organ in Periplaneta " 

 (Q. J. Micr. Sci. vol. xxix. 1888) and a short note on the embryo 

 of Aurella (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1889) were published before he took 

 his degree, and shortly after he gave an account of the Cuvierian 

 organs of the Holothuridse. AVide as w^as his general zoological 

 knowledge (he was a Vice-President of the Zoological Society, 

 and at the time of his death Zoological Secretary of the Linnean 

 Society) he specialized in the Porifera and the Protozoa, on which 

 he contributed many articles and papers, to the ' Encyclopaedia 

 Britannica,' to Sir Bay Lankester's 'Treatise on Zoology,' and 

 el>ewhere, whilst his last pul)lished book ' An Introduction to 

 the Study of the Protozoa' (London 191:2, Arnold) is, as Prof. 

 Goodrich has said, "by far the best text-book yet written on the 



