Edward Alfred Minchm. 



xxxix 



As a student he had already distinguished himself by his skill in technical 

 work, by his dogged perseverance and by his marked capacity for original 

 observation. When working over the types given to the senior students for 

 examination he was not contented simply with the confirmation of the facts 

 of anatomy as stated in the text-books, but was willing to devote his spare 

 time to inquiries on points of structure about which he could get no 

 information either from the literature or from his teachers. In this way he 

 discovered the skin pouches — regarded as stink glands — under the fifth 

 tergum of the cockroach, and the brood poiumes in the manubrium of Aurelia. 

 He published two short scientific papers on these subjects before he took his 

 degree. 



Oxford soon recognised his merit and he was awarded the University 

 Scholarship at Naples, the Eadcliffe Travelling Fellowship and finally a 

 fellowship at Merton College. In order to pursue his original investigations 

 he visited the marine biological stations at Naples, Banyul, and Eoscoff, and 

 also spent some time at work in the laboratories of Prof. Butschli at 

 Heidelberg and of Prof. E. Hertwig at Munich. But in 1899 his wanderings 

 abroad were, for a time, brought to an end by his appointment to the Jodrell 

 Chair of Zoology in University College, London. 



During this period of his career the principal subject of Minchin's study 

 was the structure of the calcareous sponges and, in particular, the histology 

 and development of the spicules. The memoir entitled " Materials for a 

 Monograph of the Asconicke," published in the ' Quarterly Journal of Micro- 

 scopical Science ' in January, 1898, was a model of a carefully-written 

 treatise, a clear exposition of new facts, and a philosophical discussion of 

 conflicting views. The important results of Minchin's work on the formation 

 of the triradiate and quadriradiate spicules of the Clathrinidte led to further 

 researches on spicule formation in Sponges and other groups of animals, both 

 by himself and by his pupil, Dr. Woodland. But Minchin's interest in the 

 Porifera extended far beyond the question of the structure and development 

 of the spicules. He was anxious, if possible, by the study of their general 

 morphology, to solve the difficult problem of the relation of Sponges to other 

 groups of animals. In 1896 he communicated to the Eoyal Society an 

 important little paper on the larva and post-larval development of 

 Leucosolenia variabilis, in which he described the significant fact of the 

 (Ufferentiation of the dermal layer of the larva into the outer epithelium and 

 the inner connective tissue of the adult. The result of these investigations 

 led him to two very definite conclusions. Firstly, that the larval develop- 

 ment shows that the Sponges cannot be considered Coelenterates ; and, 

 secondly, that the cells forming the connective tissue layer cannot be 

 considered comparable with the mesoblast of the Triploblastica. These 

 views he expressed with remarkable force and lucidity in his article on 

 Porifera in Sir Eay Lankester's 1 Treatise on Zoology,' and in his address to 

 the International Congress of Zoology at Cambridge in 1898. It was not, 

 perhaps, an original idea of Minchin's that the Porifera constitute a phylum 



