December, 1896. OBITUARY. 3^7 



The death is announced of the eminent French botanist, Auguste 

 Adolphe Lucien Trecul, at the age of seventy-eight. Mr. Trecul's 

 work has extended over the last half century, and his communications 

 to various French scientific journals number 154 in the Royal 

 Society's catalogue. The greater number will be found in the 

 Annales des Sciences Natuvelles from 1843 onwards, and in the Comptes 

 Rendus of the French Academie des Sciences. They are chiefly 

 concerned with the anatomy and morphology of seed-plants. Among 

 the many subjects at which Mr. Trecul worked we may mention the 

 following — the origin of roots and buds, secondary growth in thickness 

 in the stem of dicotyledons, laticiferous vessels and sacs, leaves, the 

 nucleus, chromatoplasts, the origin and structure of starch grains, 

 yeast and fermentation. He also published numerous valuable papers 

 on the structure of different members of the NymphceacecB, and a useful 

 monograph on the Artocarpea. Treculia, a genus of the latter order, 

 was named in his honour by Decaisne. Mr. Trecul was a member of 

 the Institute. He died on October 17 last. 



MoRiTZ ScHiFF, born at Frankfort-on-Maine in 1823, died at 

 Geneva, where he was professor of physiology, on October 6th. After 

 studying at Heidelberg, Berlin, Gottingen, and Paris, he was 

 appointed director of the ornithological department in the zoological 

 museum at Frankfort, but his revolutionary tendencies did not find 

 favour at German universities, and in 1854 ^^ was glad to accept the 

 professorship in comparative anatomy at Berne. In 1863 ^^ migrated 

 to Florence as professor of physiology, but hurting the susceptibilities 

 of the Italians by his experiments on living animals, was obliged to 

 return to Switzerland, where he was received by the University of 

 Geneva in 1876. His physiological researches, dealing chiefly with 

 the nervous system, but also with other branches, have quite recently 

 been republished in the form of a jubilee Festschrift by his admiring 

 students. 



An account of Josiah Dwight Whitney, whose death we 

 chronicled in our October number, is given in the American Journal of 

 Science for October. Born in 1820, he graduated at Yale College in 

 1839; in 1855 was appointed State Chemist of Iowa, then State 

 Geologist of California, and in i860 was made Professor of Geology at 

 Harvard, a position which was guaranteed him for life in consideration 

 of the gift of his geological library. He was all his life engaged in 

 geological research ; his field work included a survey of New 

 Hampshire, a geological exploration of the Lake Superior region, and 

 a survey of the mining regions of all the States east of the Mississippi. 

 He published several Reports on his work, also a book on the metallic 

 wealth of the United States, and in 1869 " The Yosemite Guide-Book." 

 America has lost in him one of her ablest geologists. 



