64 NATURAL SCIENCE [July 



EDWARD WILSON 



Born 1848. Died May 21, 1898 



British geologists are mourning the death of one of their most 

 respected and energetic colleagues, Mr Edward Wilson of Bristol. 

 Born at Mansfield, in Nottinghamshire, fifty years ago, his attention 

 was early directed to geological subjects, and when only fifteen years 

 of age he wrote an essay on " The Coalfields of Derbyshire," which 

 won for him a special prize at the Nottingham High School. For 

 fourteen years he was a teacher of the science classes in the Notting- 

 ham Mechanics' Institute, and during this period he devoted all his 

 leisure to the study of the geology of south Derbyshire and Notting- 

 hamshire. He published several important papers embodying his 

 results, and in 1881 he received the Darwin Medal of the Midland 

 Union of Natural History Societies in recognition of the value of his 

 work. Among more general subjects, Mr Wilson's discussion of the 

 age of the Pennine Chain in the Geological Magazine will be specially 

 remembered. In 1884 he was appointed Curator of the Bristol 

 Museum, in succession to the late Mr E. B. Tawney, and amid the 

 trying vicissitudes of that institution he continued to fulfil the duties 

 of the curatorship with enthusiasm until the time of his premature 

 death. While in Nottinghamshire, Mr Wilson had paid special atten- 

 tion to the Triassic and Rhaetic formations, and when removed to 

 Bristol he was able to extend his researches to the same strata in a 

 new field. One of his most important stratigraphical papers, indeed, 

 referred to the Rhaetic rocks of Pylle Hill, Bristol (Quart Joum. Oeol. 

 Soe., 1891). This was followed in 1890 by a still more valuable paper 

 on the Lower Oolites of Dundry Hill, written in co-operation with Mr 

 S. S. Buckman. Facilities at Bristol also enabled Mr Wilson to devote 

 much attention to Palaeontology, and he studied with success the 

 Gasteropoda of the British Jurassic formations. With Mr Hudleston 

 lie published a valuable Catalogue of the British Jurassic Gasteropoda 

 in 1892 ; and at the time of his death he was occupied with a memoir 

 on the Gasteropoda of the Lias for the Palaeontographical Society. In 

 1888 the Geological Society of London awarded to Mr Wilson the 

 balance of the Murchison Fund in token of appreciation of his 

 researches. He was an unobtrusive worker whom to know was to 

 admire ; and his untimely death leaves a sad gap in the ranks of 

 those geologists who combine painstaking field-work with still more 

 laborious study in the museum. 



MAURICE JEAN ALEXANDRE HOVELACQUE 

 Born 1858. Died at Passy, May 17, 1898* 



Dr Hovelacque was a good representative of a School of French 

 botanists ; he worked for some time under Prof. Bertrand of Lille, and 

 his researches have been chiefly conducted on the lines adopted by 

 Bertrand and other French anatomists. He contributed several 

 papers on the minute structure of the vegetative organs of flowering 

 plants, and eventually published a comprehensive treatise on the 

 anatomy of certain families of Dicotyledons. 1 This work is the result 



1 " Recherches sur l'appareil vegetatif des Bignoniaci'es, Rlrinanthacees, Orobanchees 

 et Utriculariees." 8vo, 765 pp. Paris, 1888. 



