64 NATURAL SCIENCE [July 
EDWARD WILSON 
Born 1848. Drep May 21, 1898 
BriTisH geologists are mourning the death of one of their most 
respected and energetic colleagues, Mr Edward Wilson of Bristol. 
Born at Mansfield, in Nottinghamshire, fifty years ago, his attention 
was early directed to geological subjects, and when only fifteen years 
of age he wrote an essay on “The Coalfields of Derbyshire,” which 
won for him a special prize at the Nottingham High School. For 
fourteen years he was a teacher of the science classes in the Notting- 
ham Mechanics’ Institute, and during this period he devoted all his 
leisure to the study of the geology of south Derbyshire and Notting- 
hamshire. He published several important papers embodying his 
results, and in 1881 he received the Darwin Medal of the Midland 
Union of Natural History Societies in recognition of the value of his 
work. Among more general subjects, Mr Wilson’s discussion of the 
age of the Pennine Chain in the Geological Magazine will be specially 
remembered. In 1884 he was appointed Curator of the Bristol 
Museum, in succession to the late Mr E. B. Tawney, and amid the 
trying vicissitudes of that institution he continued to fulfil the duties 
of the curatorship with enthusiasm until the time of his premature 
death. While in Nottinghamshire, Mr Wilson had paid special atten- 
tion to the Triassic and Rhaetic formations, and when removed to 
Bristol he was able to extend his researches to the same strata in a 
new field. One of his most important stratigraphical papers, indeed, 
referred to the Rhaetic rocks of Pylle Hill, Bristol (Quart. Journ. Geol. 
Soc., 1891). This was followed in 1896 bya still more valuable paper 
on the Lower Oolites of Dundry Hill, written in co-operation with Mr 
5.5. Buckman. Facilities at Bristol also enabled Mr Wilson to devote 
much attention to Palaeontology, and he studied with success the 
Gasteropoda of the British Jurassic formations. With Mr Hudleston 
he published a valuable Catalogue of the British Jurassic Gasteropoda 
in 1892; and at the time of his death he was occupied with a memoir 
on the Gasteropoda of the Lias for the Palaeontographical Society. In 
1888 the Geological Society of London awarded to Mr Wilson the 
balance of the Murchison Fund in token of appreciation of his 
researches. He was an unobtrusive worker whom to know was to 
admire; and his untimely death leaves a sad gap in the ranks of 
those geologists who combine painstaking field-work with still more 
laborious study in the museum. 
MAURICE JEAN ALEXANDRE HOVELACQUE 
Born 1858. Diep at Passy, May 17, 1898 
Dr HOVELACQUE was a good representative of a School of French 
botanists ; he worked for some time under Prof. Bertrand of Lille, and 
his researches have been chiefly conducted on the lines adopted by 
Bertrand and other French anatomists. He contributed several 
papers on the minute structure of the vegetative organs of flowering 
plants, and eventually published a comprehensive treatise on the 
anatomy of certain families of Dicotyledons.1_ This work is the result 
1 “ Recherches sur l'appareil végétatif des Bignoniacées, Rhinanthacées, Orobanchées 
et Utriculariées.” S8vo, 765 pp. Paris, 1888. 
