354 NATURAL SCIENCE. May, 1896. 



We regret to learn from Professor Mitsukuri of the death of Dr. S. 

 Hirota, who was a worker of great promise. It is not long since 

 we received from him s°rae anatomical notes on the " Comet " of 

 Linckia multifora, from the Zoological Magazine, of Tokyo, in which he 

 had also published papers on the fauna of the Ogasawara (Bonin) 

 Islands, on the loss of weight in the fowl's egg during incubation, and 

 on a skink with an accessory tail. In the Journal of the College of 

 Science, Tokyo, he had published a paper on the sero-amniotic connec- 

 tion and the fcetal membranes in the chick, while the last number of 

 that Journal contains a contribution by him on the dendritic appen- 

 dage of the urogenital papilla of a siluroid, in which he comes to the 

 conclusion that the organ in question is a highly specialised gland 

 early developed in both sexes. 



We have also to record the deaths of: Marmaduke Lawson, 

 Director of the Government Chinchona Plantations in the Neil- 

 gherries, who was Sherardian Professor of Botany and Sibthorpian 

 Professor of Rural Economy at Oxford from 1868 to 1883, at 

 Madras on February 14 ; Abel Hovelacque, Director of the Ecole 

 d' Anthropologic de Paris ; on February 10, G. Wagener, Professor of 

 Anatomy of Marburg University, aged 74 ; Lieutenant Ewind 

 Astrup, a well-known Polar explorer, and participator in both Peary's 

 Greenland expeditions, who disappeared shortly before Christmas 

 and whose body was found in the Dovrefjeld, in Norway, on January 

 2 3 by a search party; Otto Ehlers, the German explorer, who 

 started from Bayern Bay, intending to reach British New Guinea, 

 but was drowned in the Heath River ; Dr. L. Jacoby, ichthyologist, of 

 Zurich ; Professor K. Rathlef, botanist ; the ornithologist, H. Th. 

 Wharton, at the age of 50 ; Lieutenant H. E. Barnes, well-known 

 for his works relating to Asiatic ornithology, aged 48 ; J. v. Bergen- 

 stamm, the noted dipterologist, in Vienna ; Dr. A. Schadenberg, in 

 Manilla, well-known for his researches on the flora and ethnography of 

 the Philippines ; Jean Muller (Argoniensis), the director of the 

 Botanical Gardens at Geneva, Custodian of the Delessert Herbarium, 

 and a leading authority on lichens, at the age of 68, on January 28 ; 

 Dr. F. Sansoni, Professor of Mineralogy in Pavia, and editor of the 

 Italian Journal of Mineralogy ; Robert Hay, of the U.S. Department 

 of Agriculture, and author of many papers on Kansas geology, at his 

 home in Junction City, Kansas, on December 14, 1895 ; Alfred L. 

 Kennedy, metallurgist and geologist, who, in 1852, founded the 

 Polytechnic College of Philadelphia, burnt to death in his rooms at 

 Philadelphia, on January 30, being in his 80th year. T. H. Buffhaiu, 

 to whom algologists owe many interesting notes on the reproduction 

 of seaweeds, died on February 9, aged 56. 





