x Preface 



immediately offered him a Research Professorship 

 at Columbia. He was also offered the Professor- 

 ship of Zoology at the new University of Vancouver. 

 But he could not reconcile himself to leave England 

 after the outbreak of war. Owing to physical 

 delicacy he was at first pronounced unfit for the 

 Army, and he trained himself for munitions work 

 at the Heriot Watt Engineering College. But he 

 found difficulty in getting suitable employment, and 

 in July, 1915, he tried his luck at a recruiting 

 office and was enrolled as a private in the 14th 

 Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. He devoted 

 himself to his duties as a soldier with the same 

 zest and the same meticulous attention to detail 

 that marked his work in other spheres, and he 

 won the love and admiration of his comrades. On 

 Christmas Day, in camp at Gailes, he was taken 

 suddenly ill with cerebral meningitis, and he died 

 next morning. Three days after his death he was 

 gazetted Second Lieutenant in the Royal Garrison 

 Artillery. 



As a man of science he was perhaps unusual in 

 combining a devotion to pure research (he would 

 have laughed at the phrase, but all his colleagues 

 applied it to him) with a freely speculative interest 

 in his subject. He carried on his investigations with 

 an untiring patience, watchful in self-criticism, re- 

 cording his results with the greatest care and thorough- 

 ness, and persistently postponing interpretation until 

 he had gathered more results. According to his 

 principle, he maintained an absolutely dispassion- 

 ate attitude as scientific investigator. Those who 

 knew him only in other spheres would not easily 



