OBITUARY. 



GEOKGE DOWKER. 



Born, April 2, 1828 ; Died, September 22, 1899. 



Kent has to deplore the death of one of her foremost geologists, botanists, 

 and archaeologists. Mr. Dowker had only returned from the meeting of the 

 British Association a few hours before his death, which occurred quite suddenly 

 at his home in Ramsgate. Born at Stourmouth House, Stourmouth, he was 

 educated at Sandwich Grammar School, and trained for agriculture at Hodsdon 

 Agricultural College. He began farming his father's estate at the early age of 

 30, but science claimed too much of his time to allow of his success. As a 

 botanist, Dowker was the authority on Kentish plants, many of the rarer species 

 in the Flora of Kent, edited by Hanbury and Marshall, being associated with 

 his name. As geologist, he was responsible for numerous papers, notably " On 

 the Chalk of Thanet," and " On the Water Supply of East Kent." As a micro- 

 scopist, he was acquainted with the pond life of his district, and at one time was 

 president of the Margate Microscopical Club. As archaeologist, he contributed 

 to Archologia Cuntiana many valuable papers on Richborough Castle, The 

 Reculvers, and Roman antiquities at Wingham, Preston, and other places, and 

 he it was who described the Saxon Cemetery at Wickhambreaux. 



Dowker's collection of chalk flints is now in the Maidstone Museum, but he 

 leaves behind an excellent herbarium of wild plants. He was buried at Stour- 

 mouth, and Kent has lost a devoted and earnest student of a class only too rare 

 in Thanet. 



The following deaths have been recently announced : — Grant Allen, 

 facile princeps as an exponent of evolutionary natural history, on Oct. 25, 

 in his 51st year; Prof. Max Barth, director of the agricultural experiment 

 •station in Rufach (Alsace) on August 28, in his 44th year ; on October 6, 

 at the age of 63, John Bridgman, entomologist and a vice-president 

 of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists' Society — he had presented his 

 collections to the Norwich Museum ; Sigismondo Brogi, a well!- known 

 naturalist in Siena, on July 17, at the age of 48; Dr. Karl Bernhard 

 Bruhl, formerly professor of zootomy in the University of Vienna, on 

 August 14, in Graz, at the age of 79 ; J. B. Carnoy, professor of botany 

 in the Catholic University of Louvain, editor of La Cellule, well known 

 for his researches on cell-structure and on the phenomena of maturation 

 and fertilisation, on September 8, during a holiday in Switzerland, 63 

 years of age ; Chief-Justice C. P. Daly, at the age of 84, for many years 

 president of the American Geographical Society, to which he rendered great 

 services, also an enthusiastic botanist and one of the managers of the Botanical 

 Garden of New York ; Prof. Theodor Elbert, geologist in Berlin, at Gross- 

 Lichterfelde, in his 42nd year ; Prof. Joseph Erhardt, formerly director of the 

 Natural History Museum in the Castle at Koburg, in his 80th year ; Dr. 

 W. D. Hartman, conchyliologist, in West Chester, Pa., on August 16; at 

 Geneva, Hippolyte Lucas, entomological assistant in the Paris Museum of 

 Natural History ; on September 29, Dr. C. Russ, ornithologist," of Berlin ; 

 Julius Scharlock, an enthusiastic florist, at Graudenz, on August 14, in his 

 90th year; Christian Schwemmer, botanist in Niirnberg; Dr.FRiEDRiCH Theile, 

 author of several publications on natural science, at Lockwitz, near Dresden, in 

 his 85 th year ; Gaston Tissandier, founder and editor of the scientific weekly, 

 La Nature, in Paris, on September 8, aged 56 ; Rev. William Farren 

 White, entomologist, on July 21, at Bournemouth, in his 66th year. 



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