PREFACE xi 



physicians to dinner-parties. He was greatly shocked 

 at the amount of strong wine which his hosts and 

 fellow-guests consumed, and assured me that in Paris 

 it would be injurious to the reputation of a physician 

 were he not to set an example of either abstinence or 

 great moderation. 



MetchnikofE was not only exceedingly gentle and 

 courteous in his treatment of servants and employes, 

 but he and his wife contrived on a very small income 

 to help in a most substantial way poor neighbours 

 and those who had met with misf ortime whether they 

 were of French or Russian nationality. They had 

 many friends in the world of science and art, real 

 workers and thinkers, including those who had not 

 and those who had " arrived." With them I met 

 and spent a long and interesting day with Rodin the 

 sculptor and the son of Leon Tolstoi, who was 

 working in a Paris studio. Among the pleasures 

 which I have derived from the Ldfe are the accounts 

 of places such as Naples and Messina, where I 

 stayed in order to study the embryology of marine 

 animals as MetchnikofE did ; and also the appear- 

 ance in these pages from time to time of old friends 

 such as Nikolas Kleinenberg, whom MetchnikofE met 

 at Messina in 1883. I had formed an intimate 

 acquaintance with Kleinenberg at Jena in 1871, 

 when he was working at his classical monograph 

 on Hydra, and continued it at Naples in 1875. 

 From Messina, where he became Professor in 1876, 

 Kleinenberg sent me for publication in the Quarterly 

 Journal of Microscopical Science his valuable memoir 



