sxviii Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 



Tkidney of Mollusca: here again his statements were confirmed after a lapse 

 •of many years by Plate. 



His great work on Peripatus, of fundamental importance for structural 

 -zoology, also encountered mistrust on the Continent, but it is not too much to 

 •say that all subsequent work, not merely on Peripatus but on the development 

 of Arthropoda generally, has tended to support and confirm Sedgwick's views. 

 Out of this work arose, however, a wider controversy, no less than the validity 

 of the cell-theory itself, and on this subject Sedgwick took up a position 

 which can only be described as revolutionary. The orthodox view of the 

 ■subject which was then held, and which is still held by many zoologists, is 

 that the higher animal is a cell-republic and that each cell is equivalent to a 

 Protozoon. To this view Sedgwick opposed the idea that the cell of the 

 higher organism is a mere unimportant and imperfect sub-division of the 

 ■cytoplasm and that a nucleated sheet of protoplasm can and often does replace 

 a layer of cells. Sedgwick's views were received with almost universal 

 repudiation, but the work of Driesch in developmental mechanics has 

 certainly gone far to confirm them ; it has been definitely shown that an entire 

 and perfect organism can be built up out of half an egg and that such an 

 organism contains half the normal number of cells, so that each cell in the 

 smaller organism must bear a totally different relation to the whole from 

 what it does in the organism of normal size. 



At the beginning of his career Sedgwick was a strong supporter of the 

 recapitulatory theory of development. As the presence of other factors than 

 the ancestral one in the determination of development became more and more 

 obvious, Sedgwick put forward the only plausible theory that has as yet been 

 advanced to explain the existence of the recapitulatory element in develop- 

 mental history. Later in his life, disgusted with the facile and unsupported 

 assumptions which characterised too much of the reasoning on this subject, 

 he passed into an attitude of entire hostility to the theory and published a 

 series of trenchant criticisms of it in the Darwin Memorial Volume which was 

 issued in 1909. Those who still hold firmly to the truth of the recapitulatory 

 theory can only rejoice in the publication of these able criticisms, for they will 

 compel the data on which the idea of recapitulation is based to be thoroughly 

 sifted, and it is to be hoped that closely considered reasoning will be substituted 

 for the wild guesses which have too often done duty for argument when 

 recapitulation has been discussed. 



In appearance Sedgwick might be described as a typical English squire — 

 of medium height, ruddy complexion, somewhat thick-set in build, direct and 

 sincere in his manner. As one got to know him better, his sterling qualities 

 evoked such admiration from his pupils that their feeling towards their 

 master can only be described as the warmest affection. A friend of the most 

 constant and unswerving loyalty, and a friend who would bluntly tell the 

 truth even when the truth was painful to youthful vanity ; a wise counsellor, 

 the moderation and carefulness of whose advice were in sharp contrast to the 

 exaggerated language in which he " blew off steam " when off duty : such 



