April 22nd, I go I ?\ PROCEEDINGS. XXV 



Special Meeting, April 22nd, 1901. 

 Horace Lamb, M,A., LL.D., F.R.S., President in the Chair. 



The President, in making the presentation of the Wilde 

 Medal and the Wilde Premium, said : — 



"The Wilde Medal for 1901 is awarded to Dr. Elie 

 Metchnikoff, of the Pasteur Institut, Paris, for his services to 

 zoological science (i.) in the field of comparative embryology, in 

 which he was a distinguished pioneer; (ii.) in the department 

 of comparative anatomy; (iii) in the study of inflammation 

 and phagocytosis and of the pathology of infectious diseases 

 generally. 



To him we are indebted for our first accurate knowledge of 

 emljryology in the case of many animal forms, such as sponges, 

 various jelly fishes, marine worms, the scorpion and the book 

 scorpions, various insects, crustaceans, starfishes, and ascidians, 

 in fact, there is no important group of Invertebrata whose 

 embryology has not been elucidated by his investigations. 



He has paid special attention to certain small forms of 

 doubtful affinity which have been much neglected by other 

 writers. One of the most important instances of the alternation 

 of generations, a characteristic phenomenon of parasitic life, was 

 first demonstrated by him, namely, the metamorphosis of the 

 Ascaris of the frog's lung into a free-living worm of the genus 

 Rhabditis. 



The importance of the results announced in his paper on the 

 " Ancestral History of Inflammation," results both theoretical 

 and practical, ranks it as one of the most brilliant contributions 

 to science of modern days. It gave rise to the theory of phago- 

 cytosis, which furnishes an explanation of many of the phenomena 

 of inflammation, and of the immunity from bacterial diseases 

 conferred by inoculation, and established a link between 

 Virchow's cell theory of disease and the Darwinian principle of 



