NOTES 



Richard Lydekker, F.R.S., J.P. 



The sister sciences of Zoology and Palaeontology have 

 suffered a severe loss in the death of Mr. Richard Lydekker, 

 which took place at his residence at Harpenden on April 16. 



His capacity for work was astonishing, and his output even 

 more so. To attempt, indeed, to compile a complete record of 

 all his writings would be to attempt the impossible, since for 

 nearly forty years contributions from his pen, signed and 

 unsigned, appeared in a continuous stream. But though much 

 of what he wrote was but of ephemeral interest, and consciously 

 so, his more serious work will form an enduring monument to 

 his memory, proclaiming him as one of the foremost zoologists 

 of his generation. This much indeed was accorded him in his 

 lifetime. 



It cannot be said of him that he was antagonistic to the 

 evolution theory, but this had no attraction for him, and he 

 rarely referred to it. He wrote a few essays, for example, on 

 the coloration of animals, and innumerable papers on new 

 species and sub-species of mammals, which gave one the im- 

 pression that he was a whole-hearted supporter of Darwin, but 

 on not a few occasions he openly expressed his doubts as to the 

 merits of " Darwinism." 



Born in 1849, he graduated at Cambridge in 1871, gaining 

 second place in the first-class Natural Science Tripos. In 1874 

 he was appointed to the staff of the Geological Survey of India, 

 where he did pioneer work in the mountains of Kashmir. Here 

 it was that his awakening interest in palaeontology was 

 quickened. So captivating did this become that in 1882 he 

 resigned his post on the Survey in order that he might devote 

 the whole of his energies to the study of the Sivalik and Pre- 

 Tertiary vertebrates of India, of which the Indian Museum at 

 Calcutta had a great collection. Realising the impossibility of 

 successfully accomplishing this task in India, he came to England 

 and arranged to have the Indian fossils from the Indian Museum 



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