Sir A. E. Shipley

“ Being unable to obtain material for the study of malaria in man owing to the scare caused by the outbreak of plague amongst the natives, Ross worked out the life-history of an allied organism which causes malaria in birds. It is to the brilliant researches of the Italian school—prominent among whom are Grassi, Bastianelli, and Bignami—that we owe the first complete accounts of the life-history of the human parasite. It has already been explained that some of the parasites do not form spores, but persist in a more or less unchanged condition whilst in the blood of man as gametocytes. ”

“ They also visit the depths and afford an indefinite food-supply to the deep-sea dwellers.
But probably by far the larger part of the food consumed by abysmal creatures consists of the dead bodies of animals which sink down like manna from above. The surface layers of the ocean teem with animal and vegetable life. Every yachtsman must at times have noticed that the sea is thick as a purée with jelly-fish, or with those little transparent, torpedo-shaped creatures, the Sagitta. ”

“ The malaria-parasite undergoes, in its passage through the body of the Anopheles, many and varied phases of its life-history. As the Frenchman said of the pork, which goes into one end of the machine in the Chicago meat factories as live pig, and comes out at the other in the form of sausages, ‘Il est diablement changé en route.’ The mosquito is as truly a host of the malarial parasite as man, and is as necessary for its full development as is man. ”

“ The brilliant discovery by the Danish investigators of immense numbers of the fry of the common eel in the deep water of the Atlantic, west of Ireland, and the absence of the eggs and fry from the North Sea and Baltic, render it practically certain that the countless hordes of eels which leave the rivers of North Western Europe in autumn migrate to the ocean for spawning purposes; and, more remarkable still, that the delicate young elvers which enter the same streams in autumn have already overcome the perils of their long return migration. ”

“ Think what a life-history this parasite has! Living in the blood-corpuscles of a dog, sucked up by an adult tick, passed through her body until it reaches an egg, laid with that egg, being present while the egg segments and slowly develops into the larva, living quiescent during the larval stage and the nymph stage, surviving the metamorphosis, and only leaping into activity when the adult stage is reached. This most remarkable story probably indicates that the Piroplasma undergoes a series of changes comparable to those of the malaria organism when it is inside the mosquito ”

“ It must always be remembered that Pasteur was trained as a chemist—was, in fact, a chemist. In afterlife he attacked problems proper to the biologist, the physiologist, the physician, the manufacturer; but he brought to bear on these problems, not the intellect of one trained in the traditions of natural science, medicine, or commerce, but the untrammelled intelligence of a richly-endowed mind, ‘organized common sense’ of the highest order. After the legal, there is, perhaps, no learned profession so dominated by tradition, by what our fathers have taught us, as the medical ”

“ Knowing the cause, we can now guard against malaria; mosquito-nets{163} and wire windows and doors are a sufficient check on the access of Anopheles to man. If they could only be kept permanently apart, we might hope for the disappearance of the parasite from our fauna. In relieving man from the pest, all lovers of animals will rejoice that we are also relieving the probably far more acute sufferings of one of the most delicate and beautiful insects that we know. ”

“ If anything like half the adolescent stock of plaice is taken by our trawlers every year on the deep-sea fishing-grounds, the establishment of the fact must profoundly affect our views as to the causes of depletion and the remedies to be applied; for the fishing in these instances seems not to have been on the so-called ‘small-fish’ grounds or nurseries, but in areas which have always been recognized as legitimate fields of work. ”

“ At the beginning of 1904 it was estimated that over two hundred professors and lecturers at other Universities (as distinct from University colleges) in the United Kingdom had been educated at Cambridge, and, though that is by no means a matter for regret, yet it is not too much to say that, in supplying this demand for teachers, the University has done a great national work for which she is poorly requited by her difficulty in retaining a sufficient staff for herself. Fortunately, when all other funds are exhausted, the fund of patriotism remains inexhaustible. ”

“ The University, in its teaching aspect, may be regarded as an organization for providing instruction in all those branches of knowledge the teaching of which cannot be economically undertaken by the colleges. Thus, for the teaching of science, and for the provision of costly laboratories, the University is responsible; and the higher and more specialized teaching in most other departments is also provided by the University. The ancient endowments are, in the main, college endowments; but the history of the development of modern subjects is also the history of the development of the University ”

“ Another parasite which attacks flies is the fungus or mould Empusa muscæ, whose growth is fatal to the insect. The hyphæ penetrate into the body, and as they grow weaken the fly until it is unable to lift a leg, but remains glued by its viscid feet to the object upon which it rests. The fungus spreads and radiates out in all directions, covering the fly as with a velvety pile, and giving off countless minute spores, which are blown away, to alight, if they are lucky, on a further victim.
I think enough has been said to prove that flies are a very real danger to our community. ”

“ The obsession of men’s minds by an ideal which passed away half a century ago can alone account for the impression that the policy of restriction to the ancient learning is in any way possible, or has been possible for these fifty years. Those who know Cambridge may well be astonished that responsible persons should gravely{187} speak of the University of Newton and Charles Darwin, of Maxwell and Rayleigh, as still shrouded in medieval shadow. ”

“ A well-known dealer in highly-bred ponies used to boast that he had a filly so prepotent that, though she were sent to the best Clydesdale stallion in Scotland, she would throw a colt showing no cart-horse blood. Prepotency is usually obtained by inbreeding, which up to a certain point fixes the character of a race, and in all cases tends to check variation and reversion—the Jews, for instance, as a race are strongly prepotent—but there is no doubt that it may also arise as a sport, and this is probably its more usual origin in a state of nature. ”

“ Of Cambridge, at any rate, it is asserted that she is at the end of her means, that in the last forty years she has, in her efforts at development, strained her{185} resources to the utmost, and that without assistance, which, to be effectual, must be both prompt and generous, no further advance is possible. Science has emptied the University chest, yet, as the late master of Trinity Hall said, ‘Science is still hungry and aggressive.’ As the result of her straitened resources Cambridge can no longer satisfy the just demands either of science or of letters. ”

“ At least nine out of every ten Acts of restrictive legislation have been shown by experience to be futile, or to have produced results absolutely different from those anticipated. It is equally plain that the failure of these attempts to interfere with the natural course of events has been largely due to inadequate knowledge of the complicated factors which affect the growth, multiplication, and distribution of fish, and of the influence which particular modes of fishing exert upon the sources of supply. ”

“ Flies, ants, and other even more objectionable insects, are not only capable of disseminating the plague bacillus from man to man, and from rat to man, but they themselves fall victims to the disease, and perish in great numbers. They are active agents in the spread of cholera, and the histories of the South African and Cuban wars definitely show that flies play a large part in carrying the bacilli of enteric fever from sources of infection to the food of man, thus spreading the disease. ”

“ So large is the mouth that these creatures can swallow other fish bulkier than themselves; and certain eels have been brought to the surface which have performed this feat, the prey hanging from beneath them in a sac formed of the distended stomach and body-wall. It has been said of the desert fauna that ‘perhaps there never was a life so nurtured in violence, so tutored in attack and defence as this. The warfare is continuous from the birth to the death.’ The same words apply equally to the depths of the ocean. ”

“ The female is undoubtedly greedy. If undisturbed, she simply gorges herself until every joint of her chitinous armour is stretched to the cracking-point. At times even, like Baron Munchausen’s horse after his adventure with the portcullis, what she takes in at one end runs out at the other. But she never ceases sucking. The great majority of individuals, however, can never taste blood, and subsist mainly on vegetable juices. In captivity they cannot last longer than five days without food and drink; but they can be kept alive for weeks on a diet of bananas, pineapples, and other juicy fruits. ”

“ Sardines are more valuable than their adult form, the pilchard; whitebait, mainly composed of young sprats, with from 1 to 20 per cent. of young herrings, fetch more in the market than the parent form; and so long as the adults exist in sufficient number to keep up the stock of fry, sardine and whitebait fishing is perfectly legitimate.
But, assuming impoverishment from one or other or all of the causes enumerated, we should ask what steps can be taken to check it, especially as regards the more valuable flat-fish. It is at this stage that scientific knowledge becomes particularly important. ”

“ Recent experiments in hybridizing echinoderms, star-fish, seaurchins, etc., show that the hybrid tends to resemble that species whose germ-cells are most nearly approaching maturity; and thus the nutrition of the germ-cell is but another thread in that complex tangle of heredity which must not be overlooked in attempting to estimate the part played by prepotency and reversion.
Those who have seen the young hybrids playing about in the fields at Penycuik must agree that they are the most charming and compactly built little animals possible ”

“ The next time the mosquito has a meal off a man, some of these blasts will be washed into the man’s blood by the saliva which causes the irritation set up by a mosquito’s bite. It is known that when an infected insect bites a healthy man malaria ensues; and though the blasts have not hitherto been seen to enter the blood-corpuscles, they certainly give rise to the disease, and it can hardly be doubted that they force their way into the red corpuscles and form the young amœbulæ which we described at the beginning of this article. ”

“ We can consider later how the disease can be averted by keeping down the number of gnats and by preventing their access to infected patients.
We now pass to the second of the diseases carried by gnats, that of malaria.
The parasite which causes malaria is a much more lowly organized animal than the Filaria. It is named Hæmamœba, and it, too, is conveyed by an insect, and, so far as we know, by one genus of mosquito only, the Anopheles. Hence, from the point of view of malaria, it is important to know whether a district is infected with Culex or Anopheles. ”

“ But, if we are to interfere with the fishing industry more successfully than our predecessors, we should take advantage of the present time of prosperity to increase our knowledge on every side—scientific, statistical, experimental—so as to be able to act with conviction when the whole circumstances are clearer and the adequacy of our proposals is less open to doubt. ”

“ Patrick Manson propounded the hypothesis that the spores may be conveyed to man by the intervention of some blood-sucking insect; and the brilliant and laborious researches of Major Ross, undertaken with the view of establishing the truth or falsehood of this hypothesis, have within the last few years cleared up the whole question of the transmission of the disease from one patient to another. ”

“ It seems, indeed, that the time is hardly yet ripe for deep-sea fishery legislation, much as it may be needed; and the reason is that our knowledge of the questions involved, although rapidly increasing, is still too deficient to form a sound basis for law-making. ”

“ We propose to confine our attention mainly to the North Sea, and, from another point of view, mainly to the English fishing authorities, as opposed to those of Scotland and Ireland, in each of which countries the fishing industry is controlled by a separate Board. The fundamental and central question to be settled is whether there is a diminution in the fish generally, or in any particular species of food-fish in the North Sea area, by far the most productive of our fishing-grounds. ”

“ But, as we have pointed out, ‘the sun’s perpendicular rays’ do not ‘illumine the depths of the sea’; they hardly penetrate 300 fathoms. This absence of sunlight below a certain limit, and the consequent failure of vegetable life, gave rise at one time to the belief that the abysses of the ocean were uninhabited and uninhabitable; but, as we have already seen, this view has long been given up.
The inhabitants of the deep sea cannot, any more than other creatures, be self-supporting. They prey on one another, it is true ”