200 NATURAL SCIENCE. September, 



of his being placed over the head of the old curator, he was in the 

 midst of work congenial to him, and he threw himself heartily into it. 

 But the difficulties and troubles of the curatorship ceased in 1840, 

 when, after a three months' stay at Scarborough, he went to London 

 and entered as a student at University College, meeting Lindley, who 

 asked whether he knew W. C. Williamson, of Scarborough, with 

 whom Lindley was perfectly familiar by correspondence. As fellow- 

 students he had Sir William Jenner, Professor Erichson, and Sir A, 

 Garrod. Returning to Manchester after his London work was 

 finished, one of his old boyhood friends came forward with the means 

 necessary to start him in a practice, and in 1841 he mounted his brass 

 plate and started as a doctor. Always an energetic worker, Williamson 

 occupied his leisure by investigating the history of the Diatomaceae, and 

 the structure of the Foraminifera and of bone. At the same time he 

 commenced those minute studies into the structures of fossil vegetables 

 with which his name will always be associated, the iirst dealing with 

 the supposed Zamia gigas of the Lias of Kunswick Bay. A second 

 paper on the same subject was sent to Edward Forbes, and months 

 afterwards, on enquiring about it, he received a penitent letter from 

 Forbes to say that he had put it in so safe a place in his study that 

 he could not iind it, and it was subsequently returned to him by 

 Forbes' executors in 1854. The death of John Owens, in 1846, 

 affected W^illiamson's future career, for in 1851 he was chosen 

 Professor of Natural History to the newly-founded Owens College. 

 The story of his forty years' professorship, and the immense amount 

 of educational and research work done by Williamson is clearly given 

 in this biography, and the old story of the Clayton tree once more 

 attests the enthusiasm of its describer. 



From 1887 to the end the story of Williamson's life is briefly and 

 sympathetically told by his widow, his second wife, who refers to his 

 visit to the scenes of his boyhood in 1887, when all his old energy 

 revived, and he was like " an old war-horse roused by the long- 

 forgotten sound of his trumpet." He died in June, 1895, quite worn 

 out. The volume closes with a list of his works, of which the first 

 was published in 1834, ^^<^ the last in 1895. 



Agnostic Palaeontology. 



EssAi DE Paleontologie Philosophique : ouvrage faisant suite aux Enchaine- 

 ments du Monde Animal dans les Temps Geologiques. By Albert Gaudry. 

 8vo. Pp. 231, woodc, figs. 204. Paris: Masson & Co., i8g6. Price 10 fr. 



Most popular expositions of the history of extinct animals are the 

 work of compilers whose knowledge of the subject is merely the result 

 of reading. Those engaged in actual research, as a rule, are too 

 much absorbed in the technicalities of the enquiry, or too little skilled 

 in popular modes of expression, to permit of their catering for the 

 general public. W^hen, therefore, an acknowledged master — an 

 honoured veteran in the ranks of original investigators — undertakes 

 this difficult task, we turn with unusual interest to what we are bound 

 to regard as an authoritative review of the present position of the 

 branch of science in question. 



Professor Gaudry's new volume now before us is a work of the 

 latter character. It is a supplement to his well-known three-volumed 

 treatise on " Links of the Animal World during Geological Time," 

 and is intended to be the expression of his matured judgment on the 

 problem of organic evolution. It is a modest essay which will 

 delight the amateur naturalist and the general reader, both by the 



