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SOME GREAT NAMES IN BIOLOGY 



research work has given the world a much better understanding of 

 the problem of acquired immunity. 



Another name associated with the blood is that of Elias Metch- 

 nikoff, a Russian. He was born in 1845. Metchnikoff first 

 advanced the belief that the colorless blood corpuscles, or phagocytes, 

 did service as the sanitary police of the body. He has found that 

 there are several different kinds of colorless corpuscles, each having 

 somewhat different work to do. Much of the modern work done 

 by physiologists on the blood are directly founded on the dis- 

 coveries of Metchnikoff. 



Heredity and Evolution. Charles Darwin. — There is still an- 

 other important line of investigation in biology that we have not 

 mentioned. This is the doctrine of evolution and the allied dis- 

 coveries along the line of heredity. The development or evolution 

 of plants and animals from simpler forms to the many and present 

 complex forms of life have a practical bearing on the betterment 



of plants and animals, in- 

 cluding man himself. The 

 one name indelibly associ- 

 ated with the word evolu- 

 tion is that of Charles 

 Darwin. 



Charles Darwin was born 

 on February 12, 1809, a son 

 of well-to-do parents, in the 

 pretty English village of 

 Shrewsbury. As a boy he 

 was verv fond of out-of- 

 door life, was a collector of 

 birds' eggs, stamps, coins, 

 shells, and minerals. He 

 was an ardent fisherman, 

 and as a young man be- 

 came an expert shot. His studies, those of the English classical 

 school, were not altogether to his liking. It is not strange, per- 

 haps, that he was thought a very ordinary boy, because his in- 

 terest in the out-of-doors led him to neglect his studies. Later he 



Charles Darwin, the grand old man of biology. 



