APRIL 1, 1915] 
NATURE 
I2t 

Natural Sciences Tripos.. His bias was to the | 
chemical side of physiological problems, and, in 
consequence, on Foster’s advice, he began re- 
search with Kiithne at Heidelberg. Ktthne com- 
bined in a rather unusual manner the study of 
physiological chemistry with that of histology, 
and Lea’s work with him developed, as it chanced, | 
mainly on histological lines. Kithne and Lea 
were the first to observe satisfactorily with the 
microscope the changes taking place in a living 
gland—the pancreas—with intact circulation, and 
to note the special vascular supply of the Islets 
of Langerhans. One of the figures illustrating 
their paper is given to this day in most text-books 
of histology and physiology. 
Lea, after his return to Cambridge, specialised 
in physiological chemistry though he gave in- 
struction to pupils in the whole range of physio- 
logy, and to him was due the development in the 
Cambridge laboratory of advanced teaching in 
this subject. In the successive editions of 
Foster’s ‘‘Text-book of Physiology,” Lea wrote 
the part dealing with physiological chemistry, and 
in the fifth edition (1892) this part, revised and 
enlarged, appeared as a separate volume entitled 
“The Chemical Basis of the Animal Body.” His 
research work was chiefly on the chemical 
changes in food during digestion, and on the 
action of rennet and fibrin ferments. 
Lea’s first post was that of demonstrator of 
physiology for Dr. Foster. In 1881 he became 
director of medical studies and assistant lecturer 
at Gonville and Caius College. In 1885 he was 
elected fellow of the college, and soon after ! 
became bursar. He was appointed  univer- 
sity lecturer in 1884. His career in the univer- 
sity and in science was cut short by the develop- 
ment of a spinal disease—signs of which had long 
been present—making walking at first difficult 
and later impossible. None of his friends can 
forget the astonishing fortitude with which Lea 
met this shattering of his chief interests. He had 
always led an active outdoor life; he had cruised 
about the coasts in a yacht whenever opportunity 
offered; he was Captain in the Cambridge Volun- 
teers, had taken special courses of instruction at 
Aldershot, and was a good rifle shot. Since he 
could no longer carry on these pursuits, nor con- 
tinue his research in the laboratory, he decided 
after a time to break entirely with the old life. 
He left Cambridge and settled at Sidcup in Kent. 
Rarely then or later did Lea rail at fate. He 
put on a cheerful countenance, and made the best 
of what was left him. He kept in touch with his 
old friends, revised the proofs of their books as 
occasion offered, and occasionally made small 
pieces of apparatus for them with the mechanic- 
ally-driven lathe which served to keep up the 
cunning of his hands. Before leaving Cambridge 
he had married, and had one son. In a letter 
written shortly before he died, Lea expressed 
pleasure that his son had volunteered for the 
Army and was serving in the trenches. In this 

as in other matters he kept his private anxieties 
to himself. Ie 2Nlo te 
NO. 2370, VOL. 95] 
PROF. A. A: W. HUBRECHT, 
'T’HE death of Prof. Hubrecht at his residence in 
Utrecht on March 21, in his sixty-fifth year, 
| removes another link between the zoology of the 
| present day and the zoology of what may be called 
| the great epoch of Huxley and Balfour. 
His 
earlier work dates back to 1874, and was of an 
anatomical character; it was only in the later 
part of his career that he devoted himself to em- 
bryology, and advocated views which led to lively 
controversy, and were provocative of good work, 
both on his own part and on the part of those 
who opposed him. 
Speaking broadly, Hubrecht’s name will survive 
as associated with thoroughly sound work and 
with the elucidation of a large number of most 
important new facts, even if the deductions which 
he drew from them no longer find favour with 
zoologists. So far, indeed, as theories are con- 
cerned, Hubrecht’s mind continued to reflect the 
mental attitude of the zoological world in which 
his youth was passed ; it was, indeed, a time of the 
“faith that moves mountains.” Ardent naturalists 
were applying the Darwinian doctrine of evolution 
to every part of the animal kingdom; with the en- 
thusiasm of pioneers they were tackling the most 
obscure and difficult problems of the natural rela- 
tionships of animals; the deep abysses which 
separate different phyla of the animal kingdom 
were traversed by their soaring imagination, for 
were not the powers of variation limitless? and 
did not the principle of “change of function ” 
enunciated by Dohrn authorise one to homologise 
any organ of any animal with any organ of any 
other animal to which it bore the slightest re- 
semblance? So Hubrecht, to whom we owe the 
first thoroughly satisfactory account of the 
anatomy of the Nemertine worms, was convinced 
that Vertebrata were descended from a Nemertine 
worm, and that the Nemertine proboscis repre- 
sented the Vertebrate notochord. 
In his later years Hubrecht devoted himself 
principally to mammalian embryology, and made 
a series of most valuable observations on the re- 
lations between placenta and young in the 
eutherian mammals. He was led by _ these 
observations to a theory of the origin of mam- 
malia, which has not been borne out by the work 
of other embryologists or by paleontologists. He 
supposed that the higher mammalia were directly 
descended from amphibia, and that the mono- 
tremata, the anatomy and embryology of which be- 
trays in an unmistakable manner their reptilian 
affinities, were secondarily modified forms. Here, 
again, Hubrecht’s firm faith carried him over all 
difficulties. These remarks are not intended as 
any disparagement of the methods of comparative 
anatomy or embryology, but are merely designed 
to emphasise the fact that in these, as in all other 
sciences, sound inductions are only possible on the 
basis of an immense accumulation of facts. 
Modern zoologists addicted to Mendelism would 
do well to remember that “of making many factors 
there is no end, and formule are a weariness to 
the flesh.” 
