July 27, 1916] 



NATURE 



443 



^latters that scarcely need to be referred to a 

 pecial advisory board. 



Of any far-reaching advisory purpose, of any 

 great original directive enterprise, of anything in 

 the nature of spontaneous movement, this report 

 shows no record ; one looks in vain for any re- 

 ference to scientific education, or even for a 

 connected account — as contrasted with bald, dis- 

 jointed departmental summaries — of the general 

 progress of science in India, vital affairs in which 

 a Board of Scientific Advice might be expected to 

 exercise a missionary influence, if not to take a 

 commanding lead. 



The simple fact is that, so far as the advisory 

 business goes, this Report of the Board of Scien- 

 tific Advice for India is a document of the ex 

 officio genus ; and it can scarcely be otherwise 

 when the President of the Board is merely an ex 

 officio hierarch of the Indian Secretariat, instead 

 of being a man of science specially selected for his 

 critical knowledge of scientific affairs. 



ELI AS METCHNIKOFF. 



ONE of the most remarkable figures in the 

 scientific world passed from among us on 

 July 15. Elie Metchnikoff, as they wrote his 

 name in France, his adopted home, stands out as 

 the type of a gifted, indefatigable investigator of 

 Nature who, in accordance with his beautiful and 

 earnest character, never faltered in his career, 

 but from his boyhood onwards devoted himself to 

 the minute study of animal life, and by a natural 

 and as it seemed inevitable process passed through 

 the study of the microscopic structure and embry- 

 onic growth of simple marine organisms to the 

 investigation of human diseases and his great dis- 

 ■coveries of the nature of the process known as 

 inflammation and of the mechanism of " immu- 

 nity " to infective germs and the poisons produced 

 by them. By every zoologist in the world he was 

 ■especially honoured and revered ; for it was to him 

 that we owed the demonstration of the unity of 

 biological science and the brilliant proof of the 

 invaluable importance to humanity of that delight- 

 ful pursuit of the structure and laws of growth 

 and form of the lower animals which he and we 

 had pursued from pure love of the beauty and 

 wonder of the intricate problems of organic 

 morphology. 



Just as his chief and friend, the great Pasteur, 

 was privileged to proceed directly and logically 

 in his own life's work, by his genius and insight, 

 from the discovery of astonishing new facts as to 

 crystalline structure — which seemed to have no 

 bearing on human affairs — to the understanding 

 (by the aid of those discoveries) of fermentation 

 and infective disease ; so did Metchnikoff himself 

 both discover the activity and universality of the 

 organic cell-units which he called "phagocytes," 

 and at once proceed to demonstrate their prime 

 importance in the process known as inflammation 

 and the understanding of " immunity," which has 

 revolutionised medical theory and practice. 



Elie Metchnikoff was born in 1845 at Ivanavka, 

 ■near Kharkoff. His father was of Moldavian 

 NO. 2439, VOL. 97] 



ancestry and an officer of the Imperial Guard, 

 from which he retired with the rank of major- 

 general. He was devoted to the pursuits of a 

 country gentleman, among which horse-racing 

 was his special favourite. He had no tendencies 

 to scientific study. Elie's mother, whose family 

 name was " Nevakovitch," was a Jewess. He 

 owed his mental gifts largely to her. From child- 

 hood he showed a strong taste for the study of 

 Nature, .\fter passing through the high school 

 of Kharkoff he entered the university at the age 

 of seventeen and completed his degree examina- 

 tions in two years, when he went off (in 1864) to 

 Germany for further biological training. He had 

 already, in 1863, when he was only eighteen, pub- 

 lished a paper in Reichert's Archiv on the stalk 

 of \'orticella, and another on the nematode Diplo- 

 gaster. In 1864 he published some obseiAations 

 on the Acinetarian Sphaerophrya. After a brief 

 sojourn in Heligoland he went to work in 

 Leuckart's laboratory at Giessen, and accompanied 

 the professor to Gottingen when the latter was 

 promoted to that chair. In Leuckart's laboratory 

 he worked at the parasite of the frog, .4 scam 

 nigrovenosa, and made the important discovery 

 of the fact that the hermaphrodite parasite of 

 the frog's lung hatched from eggs gives birth 

 viviparously to a free-living generation of males 

 and females. . This he published in 1865 in 

 Reichert's Archiv, and a translation of his 

 paper appeared in the Quarterly Jourrial of 

 Microscopical Science in 1866. Leuckart claimed 

 to have made the discovery "with the assist- 

 ance of Herr Mecznikow," but Metchnikoff 

 briefly stated that this was erroneous and that 

 he alone had done the work in the absence of 

 Prof. Leuckart and with:>ut his aid or sugges- 

 tion. Naturally this terminated their friendly 

 relations. In the same year he published some 

 notes on those little-known microscopic animals, 

 Icthydium, Chaetonotus, Echinoderes, and Des- 

 moscolex. This also was translated for the 

 Quarterly Journal in 1866, and tlius I became 

 familiar with his name and the interesting charac- 

 ter of his work, though I did not make his per- 

 sonal acquaintance until twenty-two years later, 

 when (in 1888) Pasteur introduced me to him in 

 his laboratory in the rue Vaugirard. 



These papers were rapidly followed in 1866 by 

 others showing his first-rate powers of accurate 

 observation and originality, viz. on a European 

 land Planarian ; on the development of Myzosto- 

 mum, the ecto-parasite of the feather-star, which 

 he showed to be a modified Chaetopod ; on insect 

 embrj'ology (Hemiptera and Diptera) ; on the 

 remarkable new rotifer, Apsilus lentiformis ; and 

 on the viviparous reproduction of the larvae of the 

 fly Cecidomyia. Then he sojourned for a time 

 (1867) at Naples (before the days of Dohrn's 

 Zoological Station) and wrote on the embryology 

 of the cuttle-fish Sepiola, on the strange marine 

 forms Chaetosoma and Rhabdogaster, and in 1869 

 on Tornaria (which he showed to be the larva of 

 Balanoglossus) and on the embryology of Echino- 

 derms and of jelly-fish. 



In 1870 he was appointed professor ordinarius 



