356 



NA TURE 



[January 20, 1910 



life. On the contrary, all progress in research only 

 throws into greater relief the difficulty of the problem ; the 

 better we become acquainted with it, the more the mystery 

 deepens. Nor would it be right to assert that the micro- 

 scope is the sole instrument of research in this field. Our 

 knowledge of the properties and activities of the living 

 substance and of living things advances daily by leaps and 

 bounds through methods of investigation in which the 

 microscope plays no part. I have referred to the know- 

 ledge that has been gained of the life-history of the para- 

 site of yellow fever, in spite of the fact that the microscope 

 has failed completely, so far, to detect the parasite itself. 

 But we may safely claim that the greater and most 

 important part of modern biological knowledge could not 

 have been gained without the instrument which it is the 

 object and purpose of our club to study, to perfect, and to 

 apply ; and, further, that to be able to see the objects 

 with our own eyes makes them much more real and true 

 to us than merely to infer their presence and properties 

 from experiments in the dark, so to speak. " Seeing is 

 believing " is an English proverb which has its counter- 

 part in all languages. We may be satisfied in our minds 

 as to the existence and behaviour of the yellow-fever para- 

 site, but nevertheless its discovery by optical means would 

 be greatly welcomed as an important advance in our 

 knowledge. 



There is no greater stimulant to the all-important study 

 of living things than the feeling of wonder and delight 

 which the first sight under the microscope of objects other- 

 wise invisible produces in even the most uninstructed mind. 

 Most of us probably can date our first interest in minute 

 living objects from the time when, perhaps in early youth, 

 we were given, or allowed to use, a microscope, with which 

 we could gratify, without satisfying, our curiosity in look- 

 ing at all kinds of minute objects. • In such an occupation 

 the appetite comes with eating, as the French proverb 

 says, and the instrument which was at first a fascinating 

 toy leads us on until, one might almost say, it masters 

 and enslaves us. In this development there is another 

 instance of the parallel between the progress of the in- 

 dividual and the history of the race. To the majority of 

 early microscopists the inicroscope was but a toy, an 

 instrument which competed with the magic-lantern as an 

 amusement for drawing-room stances, and only a serious 

 minority made use of it as a means of earnest scientific 

 investigation. There are, perhaps, still microscopists 

 whose chief delight is to thrill their friends, especially 

 those of the fair sex. by the sight of hairs on a spider's 

 leg, or the elephantine proportions of a cheese-mite. If 

 so, let us not scoff, as some do, at the amateur ; we ought 

 rather to regard him with the same interest that a zoologist 

 looks on an okapi or a lepidosiren. as a living representa- 

 tive of a bygone age. For the modern microscopist is fear- 

 fully in earnest, and has but little opportunity for amuse- 

 ment in pursuing a science which taxes, not only his 

 brain, but his eyes to the utmost. There is scarcely any 

 greater physical strain than the long-continued investiga- 

 tion carried on with the highest powers of the microscope, 

 and in my own experience I have known some who lacked 

 the physical endowment for such work, and others w^ho 

 have been obliged to retire disabled from the field. Let 

 us, then, in a pursuit which but too frequently dulls 

 enthusiasm by fatigue and e.xhaustion, in which our 

 " native hue of resolution " tends to become " sicklied 

 o'er by the pale cast of thought," rather envy those who 

 retain the freshness of their early delight, and strive to 

 cultivate, rather than to stifle, that feeling of wonder and 

 curiositv which should be the starting point of all philo- 

 sophical and scientific investigation. " Two things," said 

 Kant, " fill my mind with ever-renewed wonder and awe, 

 the more often and the deeper I dwell on them — the starry 

 vault above me and the moral law within me." I venture 

 to think that had Kant lived in our days he would have 

 found a third source of wonder in the contemplation of 

 the simplest living things ■ as revealed by the microscooe, 

 in the combination they present of apparent simplicity with 

 infinite complexity, and of extreme minuteness with the 

 most extraordinary powers. To me the observation of a 

 minute organism, such as an amceba, under the micro- 

 scope, is in its way as marvellous as the sight of the starry 

 firmament. I see a minute, formless creature, without 

 NO. 20Q9, VOL. 82] 



definite parts or organs, which nevertheless exercises all 

 the functions of life and exhibits the germ of every faculty 

 we possess, and thereby proves that '.s apparent simplicity 

 and formlessness cloak a complexity of organisation far 

 transcending our powers of observation and eluding our 

 means of detection. What, again, can be more wonderful 

 to contemplate than the fact that peculiarities in the com- 

 plex mental endowment and physical structure of a human 

 being can be transmitted from one generation to the next 

 through the medium of a spermatozoon, the tiniest cell of 

 the human body, in which the microscope reveals only a 

 structure of the simplest kind? These things must rank 

 with the most wonderful and inexplicable of the pheno- 

 mena that nature presents to us, and we are as yet only 

 on the threshold of investigation. The stellar universe 

 has been observed, its laws and motions studied, for many 

 thousands of years, but our acquaintance with the 

 beginnings of life and its properties as exhibited by the 

 simplest living things is but an affair of yesterday, as it 

 were, and the scientific study of life is as yet in its infancy. 

 In these days of vast and rapid increase of knowledge 

 in such matters there is danger that we may lose the true 

 perspective, and that our perception of the whole may be 

 blunted and obscured by the immense mass of detail which 

 forces us to attend only to a small part of our science. It 

 is the special function of a club such as ours to keep fresh 

 our enthusiasm and to enlarge our outlook by contact and 

 intercourse with those working in other fields, to spread 

 the infection, if I may use the term, of intelligent curiosity 

 in the minutest natural objects, and thereby to attract and 

 enlist new workers in a field in which the harvest is 

 plentiful but the labourers are few- 



rA'/r£i?.s/Tr .i.vd educational 



IXTELLIGENCE. 

 Camuridge. — The electors to the Allen scholarship give 

 notice that they are prepared to receive applications from 

 candidates. Any graduate of the University is eligible for 

 the .scholarship provided that his age on the first day of 

 the Lent term, 19 lo, does not exceed twenty-eight years. 

 This year the scholarship is open to candidates who propose 

 to undertake research in any branch of study which comes 

 within the department of any of the following special 

 boards : — medicine, mathematics, physics and chemistry, 

 biology and geology. The scholarship is tenable for one 

 year, during which period it will be the duty of the student 

 to devote himself to research in Cambridge or elsewhere. 

 The emolument of the student is 250/., or such smaller 

 sum as the fund, after payment of all expenses, shall be 

 capable of providing. Every candidate must send to the 

 \'ice-Chancellor, Pembroke College Lodge, on or before 

 February 15, his name and a definite statement of the 

 course of research which he proposes to undert.ake, together 

 with such evidence of his qualifications as he thinks proper, 

 and with the names of not more than three referees to 

 whom the electors may apply for information. 



The LTniversity of California has received from Mrs. 

 Phoebe Hearst an offer to build, at the cost of about 

 100,000!., a museum for the housing of its anthropological 

 specimens. During the last ten years Mrs. Hearst had 

 already contributed an equal sum to the establishment and 

 maintenance of the LTniversity's department of anthro- 

 pology, and to the cost of its foreign expeditions. 



According to the Berlin correspondent of the Times, the 

 latest returns from the German universities give the total 

 number of students as 52,407, including 1850 women, as 

 compared with a total of 48,730 last year and 32,800 ten 

 years ago. There are also 3314 men and 1923 women 

 attending courses as guests. Berlin takes the first place 

 among the twenty-one universities with 9242 students, as 

 against 8641 last year, and is followed by Munich with 

 6537, Leipzig with 4761, Bonn with 3652, Breslau with 

 2405. and Halle with 2393. Gottingen has 2230, and 

 Heidelberg 1034. In Berlin University this winter there 

 are 632 women students, an increase of 232 as compared 

 with last year. 



An address delivered by Prof. Alexander Smith before 

 the section of education of the American Chemical Society 



