December 6, 1901.] 



SCIENCE. 



889 



sity of Ohio, and H. C. White, of the 

 Georgia State College of Agriculture and 

 Mechanic Arts. 



Officers of sections : College Work, J. L. 

 Snyder, of the Michigan Agricultural Col- 

 lege, chairman; W. E. Stone, of Purdue Uni- 

 versity, Indiana, secretary; Agriculture and 

 Chemistry, H. J. Waters, of the University 

 of Missouri, chairman ; C.G.Hopkins, of the 

 University of Illinois, secretary ; Horticul- 

 ture and Botany, J. Craig, of the New York 

 Cornell University, chairman ; A. Nelson, 

 of the University of Wyoming, secretary ; 

 Entomology, F. M. Webster, of the Ohio 

 Experiment Station, chairman ; H. E. 

 Summers, of Iowa State College, secretary ; 

 Mechanic Arts, H. W. Tyler, of Massachu- 

 setts Institute of Technology, chairman ; 

 F. A. Anderson, of the Kentucky Agricul- 

 tural and Mechanical College, Secretary. 



A. C. Teub. 



MARCEL NENCKI. 



By the death, on October 14, of Pro- 

 fessor Marcel Nencki, director of the Lab- 

 oratory of Physiological Chemistry in the 

 Institute of Experimental Medicine at St. 

 Petersburg, physiological chemistry has 

 lost one of its most active workers. Pro- 

 fessor Nencki was born in Poland, January 

 15, 1847. After completing his medical 

 studies at Berlin, he went to Berne in 1872, 

 as assistant in the Pathological Institute of 

 the Swiss University. At the same time he 

 became Privatdocent in physiological chem- 

 istry ; and his appointment to a chair in 

 that subject, in 1877, was among the earliest 

 recognitions which the science received as 

 an independent field of study. In 1891 

 Professor Nencki went to St. Petersburg to 

 take charge of one of the laboratories in the 

 newly founded Institute, being succeeded 

 at Berne by the late Professor Drechsel. 



Of Professor ISTencki's extensive contribu- 

 tions to organic chemistry, physiological 

 chemistry and bacteriology, it will suffice 



here to recall his investigations on the 

 chemistry of putrefaction and on the chem- 

 ical processes which take place in the in- 

 testine ; his studies on the behavior of aro- 

 matic bodies in the animal organism ; his 

 thorough researches on the pigments of the 

 blood and on animal pigments in general ; 

 the investigation of the formation of am- 

 monia and urea in mammals ; and his last 

 published paper (with N. Sieber) on the 

 chemical composition of enzymes. In 1897, 

 on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the be- 

 ginning of his scientific activity, there 

 appeared a volume entitled * Sommaire des 

 travaux accomplis par M. le professeur M. 

 Nencki et ses eleves dans ses laboratoires 

 a Berne et a St. Petersbourg. ' 1869-1896. 

 In recent years he has collaborated with 

 Professor Andreasch in editing Maly's 

 ' Jahresbericht iiber die Fortschritte der 

 Thierchemie.' Although interrupted thus 

 early, the work of a lifetime earnestly de- 

 voted to the pursuit of scientific truth has 

 left many records of permanent value. 



L. B. M. 



SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 

 Studien iiber den Eorperbau der Anneliden, V. 

 By Eduard Meyer. Translated from the 

 original Russian. In Mittheilungen aus der 

 Zoologischen Station zu Neapel, XIV., 3, 4, 

 1901. Pp. 338, 6 double plates. 

 Of the many attempts that have been made 

 to explain the historical origin of the mesoblast 

 and coelome in higher animals, none is of greater 

 interest than that of Professor Eduard Meyer, 

 of the University of Kasan, whose views find 

 their latest and fullest development in the pres- 

 ent masterly paper, the product of many years 

 of painstaking research by an uncommonly 

 clear-sighted observer. All students of embry- 

 ology are familiar with Hatschek's pregnant 

 suggestion, made in 1877, that the mesoblastic 

 pole-cells, characteristic of annelidan and mol- 

 luscan development, were originally germ- 

 cells, and that the coelome of the annelids shows 

 essentially the same relations as the gonad-cav- 

 ities of the platodes. Accepting this sugges- 



