1899.] 265 



OBITUARY. 



Charges Bason, 

 Died November 5, 1899. 



It is with a sad satisfaction that we add our small tribute to the memory 

 of the head of the publishing house which issues this magazine. Many 

 individuals and undertakings in Ireland will be the poorer for the death 

 of Charles Eason, and the Irish Naturalist loses in him a steadfast friend 

 and helper. We believe that it would not be his wish that the part which 

 he took in founding this Journal should even now be made known ; but at 

 least we may say that the Irish Naturalist would probably never have 

 been started, and could certainly never have been carried on, without 

 the help which he heartily and cheerfully gave us during its earlier 

 years. 



He was born at Yeovil, Somerset, in May, 1823. In 1856 he settled in 

 Dublin as manager for Messrs. W. H. Smith and Son. From small 

 beginnings he built up the great and successful business which thirty 

 years later passed into his own hands. Essentially a man of books, his 

 reading was varied and his interests wide. Though not a naturalist his 

 mind was ever open to the teachings of science, and the bearing of 

 modern biological thought 011 the great problems of existence was 

 always a fascinating subject to him. His presence eleven years ago at a 

 certain youthful essay on the life of Darwin was the beginning of a 

 friendship which led him afterwards to freely place his technical know- 

 ledge and the resources of his great establishment at the disposal of the 

 editors and supporters of the Irish Naturalist. 



NOTES. 



ZOOLOGY. 



The History of the European Fauna. 



Professor Newton has very kindly called my attention to a curious 

 slip which occurs in the review of Dr. ScharfPs book {Irish Nat., Nov., 

 1899, p. 244), where it is stated that the Musk Ox is not known from the 

 British Isles. The words " British Isles " have been strangely substituted 

 for "Ireland," in this sentence, as, of course, remains of the Musk Ox have 

 been found in more than one English locality, such as, for instance, in 

 the Pleistocene deposits of Maidenhead, Berks (part of a cranium), of 

 Crayford (some teeth), and of Green street Green (part of a cranium), both 

 in Kent— see R. Lydekker's Catalogue of the Fossil Mammalia in the 

 British Museum Collections, 1885, Part II., p 39. 



Professor Newton has also been good enough to point out that the 

 Great Auk, which is alluded to on the same page as one of the Arctic 

 forms in our islands, was never, so far as we know, more than a sub- 

 Arctic species, there being but one instance (if that can be trusted) of its 



occurrence within the Arctic circle. 



G.E-H.B.-H. 



