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OBITUARY. 



THOMAS HICK. 



Born May, 1840. Died August, i8g6. 



ONE of our earliest contributors has passed away in the person of 

 Thomas Hick, the palaeobotanist, lecturer in botany at Owens 

 College, Manchester. Mr. Hick was born at Leeds in 1840, became 

 B.A. of London University in 1866, and B.Sc. in 1870. He succeeded 

 Marshall Ward as assistant to the late Professor Williamson in 1885, 

 and his time was mainly devoted to vegetable physiology and histology, 

 and to tutorial work. His earlier papers were connected with the 

 structure of seaweeds, and his later with the elucidation of the 

 structures of the fossil plants of the Coal Measures, on which his 

 views were in friendly rivalry to those of Professor Williamson. 



We learn from the Manchester Guardian that at a meeting held at 

 the Museum, it was decided to establish some permanent memorial of 

 Mr. Hick, and to collect a sum of money with a view to purchasing 

 his collection of microscopic sections of coal plants and depositing 

 them in the Manchester Museum. Any surplus will be devoted to 

 the purchase of a portion of his library, to be given to the Yorkshire 

 Naturalists' Union or to perpetuate his memory in such other manner 

 as may be decided upon by the contributors. A large committee was 

 appointed to carry out these resolutions, consisting of friends and 

 scientific men representing Lancashire, Yorkshire, and other parts of 

 the country. Professor Weiss was elected secretary and convener. 



HEINRICH ERNST BEYRICH. 

 Born August 31, 1815. Died Jul\ g, 1896. 



T N Berlin Beyrich was born, there he worked, and there he died. 

 i- His published writings, chiefly on palasontological subjects, were 

 distinguished examples of conscientious works, and his first monograph, 

 on the goniatites of the Rhenish Devonian, published in 1837, 

 remains after the lapse of half a century one of the classics of cepha- 

 lopod literature. Similar high rank must be assigned by students of 

 echinoderms to his memoir on the Crinoidea of the Muschelkalk, 

 while they regard his paper on the basis of the Crinoidea Brachiata as 

 one the suggestiveness of which has borne good fruit. The trilobites 

 also shared his attention, while his chief work, on the MoUusca of the 

 North German Tertiary formations, remains unfinished. 



The value of Beyrich's work was early recognised, and gained for 

 him important official posts. As teacher of geology in his native city, 



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