60 



BLAKE, EDWARD. 



BLOOD. 



ince after the general election of 1871, with 

 the' result of unseating an unusually large num- 

 ber of the members-elect. While many of the 

 seats were vacant from this cause, the Legisla- 

 ture was convened, and Mr. Blake asked from 

 it and obtained a severe condemnation of the 

 Government for its policy of voting a large 

 sum in aid of railways, without first specifying 

 the roads to be aided and the amount to be 

 granted to each. This censure of the adminis- 

 tration led to a change of Government, and 

 Mr. Blake took office as Premier. He kept it, 

 however, for only a single session, as an act 

 passed by the Dominion Parliament to abolish 

 dual membership rendered it necessary lor him 

 to choose between the two positions which he 

 had filled for four years. 



His most noted speech in the Ontario Assem- 

 bly was one in support of a resolution respect- 

 ing the shooting of Scott by the Red river 

 insurgents, under the leadership of Louis Kiel, 

 in 1870. The'setting in motion of a new Con- 

 stitution naturally gave rise to some friction, 

 and not a few direct conflicts of opinion. The 

 Constitution embodied in the British North 

 America Act is distinctly federal in form, but 

 it would, at the outset, have been easy to im- 

 part to it in practice a tendency toward cen- 

 tralization. Against every manifestation of 

 such a tendency Mr. Blake steadily set his 

 face. His summing up of the evidence against 

 Sir John Macdonald, in the great "Pacific 

 Scandal" case in 1873, decided the fate of the 

 Conservative ministry. 



He took office asa member of the Macken- 

 zie ministry, without a portfolio, but he soon 

 withdrew to devote himself to his private busi- 

 nees and the recuperation of his health. He 

 afterward held, under Mr. Mackenzie, from 

 1875 to 1877, the office of Minister of Justice, 

 and in that capacity initiated and carried 

 through a mass of important legislation. It 

 fell to his lot also to discuss, by correspond- 

 ence with the Secretary of State for the Colo- 

 nies, Lord Carnarvon, a somewhat important 

 point in connection with the relation of Cana- 

 da to the mother-country. Long after the Red 

 river insurrection was repressed, the final dis- 

 posal of the chief insurgents continued to be a 

 difficult question, owing to uncertainty as to 

 what had been really promised to them. Lord 

 Dufferin undertook to cut the Gordian knot by 

 an exercise of the royal prerogative under his 

 "instructions," without taking the advice of 

 his ministers. A request was then sent to the 

 Imperial Government to amend the instruc- 

 tions, so that thereafter the prerogative of par- 

 don, like all other prerogatives, should be ex- 

 ercisable by the Governor only on the advice 

 of his ministers. To this Lord Carnarvon de- 

 murred, but Mr. Blake's potent arguments at 

 last convinced the imperial authorities of the 

 absurdity and danger of leaving the way open 

 to a foolish Governor to create serious trouble 

 between the two countries, and the obnoxious 

 instruction was modified as desired. 



The general election of 1878 was disastrous 

 to the Mackenzie administration, and among 

 other defeated candidates was Mr. Blake, who 

 had sat for South Bruce for two Parliaments. 

 He remained out of the Commons for one 

 session, and, when he returned to it as member 

 for West Durham, he was chosen leader of the 

 Liberal party. 



Mr. Blake has always enjoyed in an eminent 

 degree the confidence of his fellow-members of 

 the Law Society of the Province, of which 

 corporation he has for years been the presid- 

 ing and chief executive officer. He has been 

 equally fortunate in securing the suffrages of 

 his fellow graduates of the Provincial Univer- 

 sity, who have repeatedly elected him by ac- 

 clamation to the position of Chancellor. 



BLOOD. The Mechanism of the Arrest of Hsemor- 

 rhage. Recent investigation of the blood has 

 led to the discovery of a new element in its 

 composition of great practical importance, in 

 the shape of small granular bodies differing 

 greatly from both the red and the white blood- 

 corpuscles. Andral, by examining blood with 

 the microscope, either pure or mixed, as it 

 came from the vein, with one seventh of its 

 weight of sulphate of sodium, found that all 

 the fibrin was held in suspension under the 

 form of little white corpuscles 3 ^ T mm. in di- 

 ameter. To these corpuscles filaments were 

 added at the moment of solidification. Many 

 other observers, also, have seen in the blood 

 in process of coagulation these little pale gran- 

 ules, either single or agminated, and the fila- 

 ments of fibrin. In 1873 M. Ranvier also pro- 

 nounced on the nature of these little bodies. 

 "It is probable, without being proved," he 

 said, "that these angular granulations which 

 exist in the blood are little masses of fibrin, 

 and that they become the centers of coagula- 

 tion, as a crystal of sulphate of sodium placed 

 in a solution of the same salt becomes the cen- 

 ter of crystallization." 



Such was the state of our knowledge upon 

 this subject whtn, in 1877, M. Hayem an- 

 nounced that there existed in the blood pecul- 

 iar little elements having the singular property 

 of undergoing instant alteration when they 

 came from the body, more especially when 

 they carne in contact with a foreign substance. 

 As these elements are destined to become the 

 red corpuscles of the blood, he proposed for 

 them the name of hromatoblasts, believing them 

 to be the same as those already described by 

 other observers, only more or less altered in 

 appearance. He also believed that the process 

 of coagulation was intimately connected with 

 the modifications of these elements. In works 

 which he published from 1877 to 1881 he in- 

 sisted upon the viscosity which the bsemato- 

 blasts acquired when they were no longer in 

 their normal condition, adhering then to one 

 another, and to any foreign body with which 

 they came in contact. It is only after having 

 undergone a manifest metamorphosis, of which 

 this state of viscosity is the first degree, that 



