284 



that time gaining acceptance on the mechanism of reflex action. 

 In the same communication he related a remarkable set of experi- 

 ments, showing the correspondence in function between the central 

 part of the nervous system of the invertebrata and that of ver- 

 tebrated animals. 



The development of the embryo of the invertebrata largely occu- 

 pied Mr. Newport's attention, and among other more or less 

 valuable results of his inquiries, he made out the remarkable process 

 of growth of the young Myriapod, by the interpolation of successive 

 new segments at one determinate and limited region of the body. 

 The paper in which these observations were communicated was 

 nominated as the Bakerian Lecture for the year 1841. 



In the latter years of Mr. Newport's suddenly interrupted life, he 

 was led to investigate with his usual zeal and industry the recondite 

 process of the impregnation of the ovum. He chose the egg of the 

 Frog as the subject of his experiments, and recorded the results in 

 three papers communicated to the Society, the last of which, partly 

 prepared at the time of his death, and afterwards completed from 

 his written memoranda by his friend Professor Ellis, is inserted in 

 the present volume of the Philosophical Transactions. In his in- 

 quiries into this question he endeavoured to determine the several 

 conditions which affect fecundation, whether depending on the state 

 of the parent animals and their generative products or on the in- 

 fluence of extrinsic circumstances; but the main result at which 

 he arrived was the confirmation, by his observations on the Frog, 

 of the view already adopted by some physiologists on other evidence, 

 that in the process of fecundation the spermatozoids actually reach 

 the interior of the ovum. 



In Mr. Newport's studies of insects and other invertebrated 

 animals, it was more to his taste to investigate structure, function, 

 and habits, than to occupy himself with zoological description and 

 arrangement; but that he could ably deal with the classification 

 and natural-history relations of animals is shown in his admirable 

 monograph on the Myriapoda, in the Transactions of the Linnean 

 Society. 



Mr. Newport was endowed with singular aptitude for the pur- 

 suit he had chosen. His well-known skill of hand in minute ana- 

 tomical research, and his ingenuity in devising and dexterity in 



