Elie did not possess, she helped him in reading and translating from that language. But her chief talents were in the arts of painting and sculpture, and when they purchased their country house at Sèvres, she built a studio in the garden in which to pursue her vocation.

Metchnikoff on several occasions came to England to take part in “congresses” or to give special addresses, and often stayed a day or two with me in London.[1] I was with him at the Darwin Celebration at Cambridge in 1909, and the last occasion when he came was to give the Priestley Lecture of the National Health Society in November 1912. At my request he selected “The Warfare against Tuberculosis” as his subject, and gave a most valuable account of the history and actual condition of that enterprise, relating the important results of his expedition to the Kalmuk Tartars for the purpose of studying the immunity from and the liability to infection by tuberculosis among that nomad population. The lecture was delivered in French, and I made a translation of it which appeared with numerous illustrations in the journal called Bedrock, published by Constable & Co. I mention that publication here as it is the only one excepting the three lectures on “The New Hygiene” (Heinemann, London, 1906) originally published in an English form by Metchnikoff, and deserves more attention from the English medical public than it has received.

I found Metchnikoff a delightful companion. He always had something new or of special interest to show to me at the laboratory—some microscopical preparation, the digestive process in Protozoa, the microbian parasite of a water-flea, a new method of dark ground illumination with high powers (Commandant’s method for film production), the newly discovered Treponema of syphilis, or the experimental inoculation of a disease under study. Sometimes I would lunch at his house, when, although he neither smoked nor took alcoholic drinks himself, he made a point of giving me first-rate claret and a good cigar. It was about the year 1900 that he arranged for the preparation of a pure “sour milk” made by the use of a special lactic ferment (selected and cultivated by himself), and this he took regularly. I found it a most agreeable food, and for several years made it an article of my own diet. He was very careful about the possible contamination of uncooked food by bacteria and the eggs of parasitic worms, and in consequence had “rolls” sent to him from the bakers each in its separate paper bag, whilst he would never eat uncooked salads or fruit which could not be rendered safe by “peeling.” This was not an excess of caution, but resulted from his characteristic determination to carry out in practice the directions given by definite scientific knowledge, and to make the attempt to lead so far as possible a life free from disease. Often when I arrived in Paris he would invite me to lunch at one of the leading cafés, and though he ate very simple food himself took keen pleasure in ordering the best for me and thoroughly enjoyed the change of scene and the amenities of a first-rate restaurant. During one of his visits to London, I remember that he was invited, and I with him, on two or three occasions, by leading London 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.

Metchnikoff was not only exceedingly gentle and courteous in his treatment of servants and employés, 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 misfortune 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 Léon Tolstoï, who was working in a Paris studio. Among the pleasures which I have derived from the Life are the accounts of places such as Naples and Messina, where I stayed in order to study the embryology of marine animals as Metchnikoff did; and also the appearance in these pages from time to time of old friends such as Nikolas Kleinenberg, whom Metchnikoff 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 1875, Kleinenberg sent me for publication in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science his valuable memoir on the embryology of a species of Earthworm, and also rare and interesting specimens of Cephalopoda.

Another great and noteworthy figure about whom all zoologists are glad to learn as much as possible is Kovalevsky. Metchnikoff made his acquaintance at Naples in 1864, and they formed a close friendship for one another. Later, in 1867, they shared the Baer Prize of the Petersburg Academy for their discoveries in embryology (p. 58). In 1868 Metchnikoff had a dispute with Kovalevsky as to the origin of the nervous system of Ascidia (p. 62), concerning which he subsequently admitted that he was wrong and Kovalevsky right. There is no doubt that Kovalevsky, by his numerous important investigations of invertebrate embryology, and especially of that of Ascidia and Amphioxus, laid the foundation of cellular Embryology, and the modern study of the embryology of Invertebrates. Metchnikoff’s contributions were also of great value and importance (pp. 51, 52, 53, and pp. 72 and 73), though he has not so great a triumph in animal morphology to his credit as Kovalevsky’s discovery of the close identities of the development of organs in Ascidia and Amphioxus. I had long cherished profound esteem for Kovalevsky when in 1896 I met him and his daughter at Wimereux with Professor Giard. He came in the autumn of that year to London, but left unexpectedly owing to some nervous fear of annoyance by the police. The great position of Kovalevsky was deliberately ignored in a German history of Zoology,[2] published just before the Great War. Metchnikoff describes Kovalevsky as a young man, small and timid, with shy but cordial