468 NATURAL SCIENCE. Dec, 1893. 



lifelong friend of Richard Owen, Bennett became an enthusiastic 

 naturalist, and provided his friend with rich and valuable material. 

 The first to find Nautilus in the living state, he forwarded his prize to 

 Owen, who wrote upon it his celebrated " Memoir on the Pearly 

 Nautilus," 1832. Bennett wrote numerous papers on Natural History, 

 the most important perhaps being his observation on Omithorhynchus 

 (Proc.Zool. Soc, 1859) ; he also published " Wanderings in New South 

 Wales," 1834; an d "Gatherings of a Naturalist," i860. On the 

 foundation of the Australian Museum, Bennett was chosen as first 

 Secretary, and the growth and importance of that Institution is largely 

 due to the energy and industry of this eminent naturalist. 



NEWS has been received of the death of Dr. Dionys Stur, the 

 eminent geologist and palaeobotanist, who passed away at 

 Vienna on October 9. For more than forty years he was connected 

 with the Imperial Geological Survey of Austria, and in 1885 became 

 Director. He retired from the service in April of last year. In 1890 

 Dr. Stur received the Cothenius Medal from the Leopold Caroline 

 Academy, and was elected a Foreign Member of the Geological 

 Society of London. 



WE also have to record the death, on November 13, of Mr. William 

 Dinning, the well-known Honorary Secretary of the Natural 

 History Society of Northumberland and Durham. He had attained 

 the age of 57, and had been in failing health for some time. Mr. 

 Dinning's chief scientific occupation, pursued in whatever leisure 

 he could obtain in the midst of absorbing business-engagements, was 

 the collection and patient preparation of the vertebrate fossils of the 

 local Carboniferous and Permian formations. He accomplished much 

 in association with the late Messrs. T. P. Barkas and Thomas Atthey, 

 and several of his beautiful drawings illustrate the papers of Messrs. 

 Hancock, Atthey, and Embleton in the Annals of Natural History and 

 the Northumberland Transactions. 



IN our October number (p. 308) we gave a short notice of the late 

 Edward Charlesworth. We were unable at the time to ascertain 

 the dates of his birth and death. We learn (from the Geological 

 Magazine) that he was born September 5, 1813, and died July 28, 1JS93. 



