4S The Irish Naturalist. 



sands I also found several Puffins, Razorbills, and Guillemots, all driven 

 ashore by the N.W. gale of the two previous days. — Robert Warren, 

 Ballina (in Zoologist for January). 



Great Shearwater in Killala Bay, Co. Mayo.— In the Zoologist 

 for January, Mr. R. Warren writes, that on 23rd April last, he watched a 

 flock of eleven Great Shearwaters (Puffinus major) fishing near the pier- 

 head of Enniscrone. He remarks that he never previously saw them on 

 the Irish coast in April, and suggests that they may possibly breed on 

 some part of the sea-board. 



OBITUARY. 



John Tyndai,i,. 

 The death of Tyndall on December 4th, at his house, at Hindhead, 

 Surrey, removes from the world of science one of the most famous 

 Irishmen of the century. He was born at Iveighlin Bridge, Co. Carlow, 

 in 1820. After serving on the staff of the Ordnance Survey, and prac- 

 tising as an engineer at Manchester, he began his purely scientific work 

 in 1847, as teacher of physics in a Hampshire school. Thence he pro- 

 ceeded to Germany, where he studied at Marburg under the celebrated 

 Bunsen, and aftewards at Berlin. Physical investigations of great value 

 then made him famous, and on his return to England in 1853 he was ap- 

 pointed professor at the Royal Institution, where he worked in company 

 with Faraday. He resigned his appointment in 1883, since which time 

 he has lived either in Switzerland or in Surrey. 



It would be inappropriate, in this Magazine, to dwell upon the purely 

 physical researches which formed the greater part of Tyndall's scientific 

 work. At several points, however, his work touched the domains of 

 natural science. He was one of the most daring of Alpine climbers, 

 and during his holidays in Switzerland, he made the classical researches 

 upon the motion of glaciers, which must always guide our speculations 

 as to the action of ice in past ages of the earth's history. He was 

 also a pioneer in the study of the minute organisms which we know 

 generally as bacteria ; his researches, carried on in the pure air of his 

 Alpine retreat, proved that these humble forms of life are developed from 

 living germs, and that their origin from dead matter must remain a 

 matter for speculation. But Tyndall's best-known service to biology was 

 his popular advocacy of the evolution theory. His power of clear ex- 

 position, and his Celtic imagination and eloquence, which made his 

 physical lectures and books so popular, came to the aid of the evolution- 

 ists in the great conflict which followed the publication of the " Origin 

 of Species" in 1859. One of Tyndall's most powerful strokes in this 

 conflict was made on Irish soil, when, in 1874, he presided over the 

 British Association at Belfast, and delivered the address which roused 

 such a storm of opposition in some quarters. Tyndall's metaphysical 

 and anti-theological speculations which largely caused this opposition 

 need not be discussed here. It is recognised, by this time, that the 

 student of nature may accept the physical and biological positions of 

 the dead master without committing himself to those. 



G. H.C, 



