i8 95 . OBITUARY. 279 



notice ; a perusal of a list of his papers in the Royal Society catalogue 

 affords some idea of the main lines of his work. In addition to 

 numerous and exhaustive memoirs on the Tertiary floras of France, 

 there are larger treatises in connection with which Saporta's name 

 has long been widely known beyond the circle of fellow workers in 

 his chosen study. His semi-popular " Le monde des plantes avant 

 l'apparition de 1'homme " affords a good example, not only of his wide 

 knowledge of fossil botany, but of the finished literary style which 

 always characterised his writings. In addition to the descriptive 

 details in his voluminous monographs on Tertiary and Mesozoic floras, 

 we always find that he has paid special attention to those wider 

 problems, which his thorough and extensive knowledge enabled him 

 to deal with ; such questions as the distribution of fossil floras, 

 their comparison with recent vegetation, and the interesting subject 

 of climatic conditions are constantly kept in view as the great aim 

 of his palaeobotanical investigations. Of particular interest to 

 English readers are the volumes on the Jurassic flora of France. In 

 this excellent series of monographs, only recently completed, 

 Saporta did not confine himself within the limits of a single 

 country, but by the comprehensive scope of his work raised it to 

 the level of an invaluable epitome of European botany in Jurassic 

 times. Some few years ago Saporta played a prominent part 

 in the much-controverted question as to the nature of certain so- 

 called fossil algae ; in strenuously upholding the algal nature of the 

 numerous and varied markings or half-relief patterns on the surface 

 of rocks, it would seem that his botanical enthusiasm had been 

 allowed to get the better of scientific reasoning. The work which he 

 published in conjunction with Professor Marion on " The Evolution 

 of the Plant Kingdom " suffers very materially from the questionable 

 nature of some of the evidence, which is drawn from ill-preserved 

 plant fragments or purely inorganic markings. A few weeks ago 

 Saporta completed an important monograph on the Mesozoic flora of 

 Portugal, in which extremely valuable additions were made to our 

 knowledge of the younger floras of that period. 



One of Saporta's distinguished fellow-workers in palaeobotanical 

 science, in a letter to the writer, bears eloquent testimony to his 

 genial and kindly character ; those of us who knew him only as a 

 correspondent, must have been struck by the generous spirit in which 

 he was always ready to place his extensive and detailed knowledge at 

 the disposal of younger students. The Marquis de Saporta passed 

 away at the age of seventy-two, on January 26, at his residence in 

 Aix-en-Provence ; he retained to the last " un jeunesse d'esprit, un 

 enthousiasme, vraiment exceptionnel meme chez les plus jeunes." 



The death of Thomas Twining on February 16 removes from 

 our midst one of the earliest advocates of technical education. 



