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THE concept and the term “metabolism” have played such a prominent part in the development of physiological science that it should be interesting to know by whom, and when, the term was first used. Prof. Bayliss, in his “Principles of General Physiology” (1915, P. 263), says that, so far as he can discover, “metabolism” was first used by Sir Michael Foster in his “Text-book of Physiology,” the first edition of which was published in 1883. It seems, however, that there is a still earlier use of the term in the writings of no less well known an investigator than Theodore Schwann, enunciator of the cell-theory. The passage I allude to occurs in the chapter called “Theory of Cells,” the last in Section III. of Schwann's classic, “Microscopical Researches into the Accordance in the Structure and Growth of Animals and Plants, by Dr. Th. Schwann, Professor in the University of Louvain,” published in Berlin in 1839. My translation of it is that made in 1847 by Dr. Henry Smith, of London, for the Sydenham Society; it runs thus (p. 193):—“The question, then, as to the fundamental power of organised bodies resolves itself into that of the fundamental powers of the individual cells. … These phenomena may be arranged in two natural groups: first, those which relate to the combination of molecules to form a cell; secondly, those which result from chemical changes either in the component particles of the cell itself or in the surrounding cytoblastema, and may be called metabolic phenomena (τò μϵταβoλικòν, implying that which is liable to occasion or suffer change).” The italics are in the original. Here, then, so far as I know, is the first use of the term “metabolic,” though undoubtedly not the first occurrence of the conception of chemical changes in living matter. Schwann uses the term “metabolic” exactly in its present-day sense, the phenomena of change, interchanges, of material in and by living matter.

COLOURED thinking is such a peculiar condition that those interested in it will welcome the details of a well-marked case of it. It must be distinguished from linked sensations such as coloured hearing—one of the synæsthesiæ—in which heard sounds call up colours, as when the low notes of the organ suggest violet or the high notes white or yellow, etc.

A GOOD deal is being written on the terms of peace and on our attitude towards the Germans after the war in the spheres of pure science, applied science, and industry generally. While these and similar topics are in the melting-pot of controversy, this might be the suitable time to bring up the subject of the attitude of Germans towards the history of science in general, and towards the part played in scientific discoveries by English-speaking people in particular.

EMERITUS-PROFESSOR JOHN GRAY M'KENDRICK, who died in Glasgow on January 2, was born in Aberdeen in August 1841. By the death of his parents he was at a very early age thrown upon his own resources. When he was but thirteen years of age he was sent to spend a summer with his grandfather at Braco in Perthshire, where, herding sheep daily from 5 A.M. to 8 P.M., he learned to know and love the plants and the animals and Nature in all her moods. Zoology became M‘Kendrick's first scientific study; and the youth of seventeen actually demonstrated his little marine aquarium at a con versazione of the British Association which met in Aberdeen in 1859. Here he saw for the first time Faraday, Owen, Murchison and Huxley; science had begun to call him to herself.

MAY I have some of your valuable space in order to put a question to physiologists and physicists whom I could not reach so conveniently in any other way?

THE following allusion to Napoleon having spared the University of Pavia in 1804 on account of the memory of the illustrious man of science, Spallanzani, who had been a professor there, is so interesting at the present time that I venture to bring it under the notice of readers of NATURE.

THE discovery of the capillary blood-vessels being an event of such supreme importance in biology, it is highly desirable that the date of it should be accurately ascertained. It so happens that it is known for certain it was made in the year 1660 by Marcello Malpighi in the city of Bologna, and yet nearly every author gives the date of this discovery as 1661.

IT might not be altogether inappropriate at this time when the world of true culture is grieving inconsolably over the destruction of the University of Louvain, to be reminded that the originator of the famous cell-theory, Theodore Schwann (1810–82), was for nine years a professor at that University. To biologists this fact is probably the most interesting association which the mention of Louvain arouses. Schwann vent to Louvain as professor of anatomy in 1838, and left it for a chair at Liège in 1847. It was in 1839 that he gave to the world the call-theory in a treatise, “Microscopical Researches into the Accordance in the Structure and Growth of Animals and Plants,” as the title runs in the translation made by Henry Smith in 1847 for the Sydenham Society.