LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON, 75 



1857. He was also Fellow of the Eoyal Astronomical Society (1848), 

 Geological Society (1853), Eoyal Society (1867), and Eoyal Meteo- 

 rological Society, of which he was one of the founders, in 1850. 



St. Geokge Jackson Mitart, born at Brook Street, Grosvenor 

 Square, on 30th November, 1827, \Aas of Welsh descent. He was 

 educated at Clapham, Chiswick, Harrow, and King's College, 

 London ; and, deprived of entry at Oxford by his having in 1844 

 become a Catholic, he finally entered St. Mai-y's College, Oscott. 

 In 1851 he passed to the Bar, at Lincoln's Inn, but soon retired 

 from the legal profession in favour of a Natural History career. 

 In 1862 he was appointed Lecturer on Zoology in St. Mary's 

 Hospital Medical School, which appointment he held daring the 

 most active period of his life, resigning it in 1884. His first paper, 

 " On the Crania of the Lemuroidea," and his first book, ' On the 

 Genesis of Species,' were published soon after he began to teach ; 

 and in 1873 he produced his best book for the student, viz., his 

 ' Lessons in Elementary Anatomy,' still in circulation. Side by 

 side with these earlier publications, Mivart contributed to the 

 pages of the ' Popular Science Eeview' a short series of articles on 

 the broader characters of certain classes of Invertebrata, each of 

 them beiug based on the more detailed consideration of an easily 

 accessible genus ; and in these, his only serious essays upon the 

 Invertebrata, there is evident the influence of Huxley, whose 

 lectures Mivart had previously attended, and who was at the time 

 maturing his famous ' Type System ' of biological instruction. 

 That Huxley's teaching was further responsible for the conception 

 of Mivart's ' Lessons ' he himself admitted ; and, in consideration 

 of this intimacy of relationship between the two men, it is the 

 more regrettable that after a controversy in the pages of the 

 ' Contemporary Eeview,' arising out of the attitude assumed by 

 Mivart in his ' Genesis of Species ' towards the Darwinian doctrines, 

 at the time slowly gaining gi-ound, they became estranged for a 

 number of years. 



Mivart's zoological papers are numerous, and they deal mostly 

 with the osteology of the Yertebrata, less conspicuously with 

 the myology and taxonomy of certain groups, but only occa- 

 sionally with visceral anatomy. Indeed, he mostly dealt with 

 parts easy of access, such as the dried skeleton and the surface 

 of the brain, which could be prepared and brought to him for 

 study and description by an assistant. Three of his papers were 

 written in conjunction with Dr. J. Murie, viz., those on the 

 anatomy of Hyrax, Nycticehus, and the Lemurs, and one in asso- 

 ciation with the Eev. E. Clarke, " On the Sacral Plexus and Sacral 

 Vertebrae of Lizards and other Vertebrata," which, with his paper 

 on the " Cerebral Convolutions of the Caruivora," constitute his 

 leading contributions to the Linnean Society's publications. His 

 papers on the osteology of Mammals and Birds will ever rank as 

 his best, and they are elaborate records of detail invaluable for 

 reference. His chief contribution to zoological literature is his 



