42 PEOCEEDINGS OP THE 



hand. He was a naturalist of the old type, upon whose shoulders 

 lay the burden of the groundwork of their science. Happiest 

 in the field, when, face to face with nature, his poetic fancy 

 found full play, he revelled in organic life and its manifold forms. 

 Asa marine zoologist he was also famous, if only by association 

 with the )>ioneers of his time. The elder Carpenter, Hancock, 

 Hincks, G-vAyn Jefireys, Wyville Thomson, his immediate con- 

 temporaries ; Busk his great personal friend ; Owen, Hooker, 

 the elder Agassiz, his early councillors; Mcintosh and Norman 

 his advisers of late years : truly may it be said that his name is 

 great, and that with his decease a link with the historic past has 

 been lost. 



As a worker and writer Allman was diffuse and voluminous, 

 his published papers covering a wide field ranging from the 

 lowest to the highest organisms. Becent and fossil forms alike 

 fell under his sway, and upon the study of both he has left his 

 mark. Very early in his career he showed a partiality for the 

 Coelenterata and other classes of Invertebrata at that time little 

 investigated ; and, as all the world of zoologists knows, his life's 

 work A\as the masterly unravelling of the synonymy, structure, 

 and life-history of the Tubularian Hydroids, the study of which 

 lie was the first to place upon a comprehensive scientific basis. 

 His two great volumes on these most marvellous of Nature's 

 productions came as a revelation to the naturalists of the period. 

 Pollowing on the lines of the 'British Naked-eyed Medusae' of 

 Forbes and the 'Oceanic Hydrozoa' of Huxley, they opened up 

 a new field, and introduced new methods and a rational system 

 of terminology, the eftects of which are evident in all subsequent 

 work upun the Coeleuteratn. These masterly monographs, to- 

 gether with ills no less remarkable treatise on the Freshwater 

 Polyzoa, embody the continuous labours of long years, the 

 general order of which may be judged from the lengthy series of 

 papers which he from time to time published as ebullitions of 

 the main stream of his ideas, aud which aroused the interest and 

 enthusiasm of contemporary v\ orkers to an altogether exceptiunal 

 degree. If only by association with genera such as Limnocodium, 

 Myriothela, EJiahdo^leiira, Allman's name would have become a 

 landmark in zoological literature, but his work upon these all- 

 important organisms, sufficient to have made him famous, pales 

 into insignificance beside the afore-meutioned monographs. 

 They have long taken high rank among the classics of Zoology ; 

 aud, powerful and philosophic as are their pages, these are not 

 second in merit to the marvellously beautiful pictures which 

 both illustrate and adorn them, for the most part faithful copies 

 of Allman's own originals. 



Beyond his epocii-making treatises aud his miscellaneous 

 papers, Allman contributed a series of Jieports upon Maiine 

 Invertebrates of tlie Expeditions of his time. Those upon the 

 collections of the ' Porcupine,' the Gulf-Stream exploration of 



