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report of two old ladies who had become so old that they felt no more desire for life—they wanted to die, just as all of us want to go to sleep at the end of a hard day’s work. "Ha!" cried Metchnikoff, "that shows that there is an instinct for death just as there is an instinct for sleep! The thing to do is to find a way to live long enough in good health until we shall really crave to die!"

Then he set out on a thorough search for more of such lucky old ladies, he visited old ladies' homes, he rushed about questioning old crones, with their teeth out, who were too deaf to hear him. He went all the way from Paris to Rouen to interview (on the strength of a newspaper rumor) a dame reported to be a hundred and six. But, alas, all of the oldsters he talked to were strong for life, he never found any one like the two legendary old ladies. Just the same he cried: "There is a death instinct!" Contrary facts never worried him.

He studied old age in animals; and people were always sending him gray-haired dogs and dilapidated ancient cats; he published a solemn research on why a superannuated parrot lived to be seventy. He owned an ancient he-turtle, who lived in his garden, and Metchnikoff was overjoyed when this venerable beast—at the great age of 86—mated with two lady turtles and became the father of broods of little turtles. He dreaded the passing of the delights of love, and exclaimed, remembering his turtle: "Senility is not so profoundly seated as we suppose!"

But to push back old age? What is at the bottom of it? A Scandinavian scientist, Edgren, had made a deep study of the hardening of the arteries—that was the cause of old age, suggested Edgren, and among the causes of the hardening of the arteries were the drinking of alcohol, syphilis, and certain other diseases.

"A man is as old as his arteries, that is true," muttered Metchnikoff, and he decided to study the riddle of how that loathsome disease hardens the arteries. It was in 1903. He had just received a prize of five thousand francs, and Roux—