The friendly attitude of France towards Italy during the period immediately subsequent to the occupation of Rome seemed to cow and to dishearten the Vatican.
Though this may dishearten the systematist, Scourfield (1900) reminds us that " It was in a water-flea that Metschni koff first saw the leucocytes (or phagocytes) trying to get rid of disease germs by swallowing them, and was so led to his epochmaking discovery of the part played by these minute amoeboid corpuscles in the animal body."
Neither the opposition of Lord Palmerston, who considered the projected disturbance as too radical not to endanger the commercial position of Great Britain, nor the opinions entertained, in France as well as in England, that the sea in front of Port Said was full of mud which would obstruct the entrance to the canal, that the sands from the desert would fill the trenches - no adverse argument, in a word, could dishearten Ferdinand de Lesseps.
