1869.] OBITUARY NOTICE. 469 



on both shores of Lake Erie, and I was informed more than twenty- 

 years ago that attempts had been made to collect the iron sand 

 along the lake, and use it, together with bog ore, in a blast 

 furnace on the Canadian shore. The iron sands of Tarauaki, in 

 New Zealand, are well known ; and similar sands, according to 

 Bruno Kerl, are worked in open hearths near Naples. 



Black magnetic iron sands are found distributed in greater or 

 less abundance, in numerous localities along the seaboard of 

 Connecticut and Khode Island, and it is said upon some of the 

 adjacent islands. The utilization of these abundant and wide- 

 spread deposits of an ore which is free from phosphorus and 

 sulphur, and may be obtained in a great degree of purity by the 

 magnet, is a problem well worthy the attention of metallurgists, 

 and is already attracting considerable attention. 



OBITUARY NOTICE. 



By late advices from Christiania we learn, with regret, of the loss 

 which science has sustained by the decease of Prof Michael Sars, 

 the eminent zoologist. He was born on the 30th of August, 1805, 

 at Bergen, where his father was a shipowner. After finishing his 

 academical studies at Christiania, and evincing at an early age his 

 predilection for natural science, he entered into priest's orders, and 

 in 1830 became pastor at Kinn, in the diocese of Bergen. Ten 

 years afterwards he had charge of the parish of Manger in the 

 same diocese. As both these parishes were on the sea-coast, Sars 

 had constant opportunities of pursuing his zoological researches. 

 Ip 1829 he published his first essay, entitled " Bidrag til Soedy- 

 renes Natur-historie," and in 1846 the first part of his celebrated 

 work Fauna littoralis Norvegiae In 1854 he was appointed 

 Professor Extraordinarius of Zoology at the University of Chris- 

 tiania, a position which he filled up to the time of his lamented 

 death with great honour to his country, and to the satisfaction of 

 the whole world of science. His celebrity as a zoologist, as well 

 as a palaeontologist, was fully recognised by all naturalists and 

 geologists, and he was elected a member of several forcing 

 scientific societies. Our own distinguished countryman, the late 

 Edward Forbes, individually showed his appreciation of Sars's 

 labours in the eloquent pages of his own posthumous work, 

 " The Natural History of the European Seas," when he said. 



