OBITUARY. 



JEAN LOUIS ARMAND DE QUATREFAGES. 

 Born February io, i8io — Died January 12, 1892. 



BY the recent death of Professor De Quatrefages, the scientific 

 literature of France has lost a contributor whose graceful pen 

 had been active for more than half a century. Jean Louis Armand 

 de Quatrefages de Breau, of Protestant descent, was born on February 

 10, 1810, at Berthezeme, near Vallerangue, in the Dep. of the Gard. 

 At the University of Strasbourg he took a double degree, graduating 

 as a doctor both of science and of medicine. Physical science seems 

 to have attracted his early attention, as one of his theses, written when 

 only nineteen, w^as entitled " Theorie d'un Coup de Canon," and the 

 following year he published an essay, " Sur les aerolithes." Among 

 his early writings on natural history was one on the Anodonts, 

 which attracted attention, and probably led to his appointment, 

 shortly after its publication, as professor of Zoology at Toulouse. 

 Dissatisfied, however, with provincial life, he resigned this appoint- 

 ment, after a tenure of only two years, and migrated to the capital, 

 where he was befriended by Milne-Edwards. 



In 1842, De Quatrefages commenced a series of scientific expedi- 

 tions to the Mediterranean and the Adriatic, which he described in a 

 number of articles contributed to the Revue des Deux Mondes. These 

 essays were afterwards collected in two volumes, which were published 

 in 1851 under the title of " Souvenirs d'un Naturaliste." An English 

 translation, by E. C. Otte, appeared in 1857, as " The Rambles of a 

 Naturalist on the Coasts of France, Spain, and Sicily." 



At length a professorship in the metropolis rewarded the active 

 naturalist. In 1850, he was appointed to the chair of Natural 

 History at the Lycee Napoleon, and five years later he succeeded 

 Serres as professor of Anthropology and Ethnology, at the Musee 

 d'Histoire Naturelle. Although the Science of Man henceforth 

 became his favourite study, he continued for some years to carry on 

 his work on the invertebrata : witness his " Histoire naturelle des 

 Anneles marins et d'eau douce," which appeared in 1S65. The 

 diseases of the silkworm also engaged his attention, and as early as 

 1859 he gave to the world his " Etudes sur les maladies actuelles du 

 \'er a sole," followed the next year by his "Nouvelles Recherches " 

 on the same subject. He was likewise the author of an " Essai sur 

 I'histoire de Sericulture." 



