PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 167 
year, and fairly commenced a career of scientific research, which was 
continued uninterruptedly for more than half a century. His early 
papers were chiefly on botanical subjects, and his first great discovery, 
made in 1820, was that fungi are developed from spores, and not by 
spontaneous generation. The minute anatomy of animal tissues also 
attracted his attention, but his fame chiefly rests on the many brilliant 
discoveries which he made in connection with living and fossil Fora- 
minifera, Polycistine, and Infusoria, using this term in the sense 
employed by him, which included many organisms now regarded as 
plants. 
The earliest paper connected with these subjects was published in 
1829, and from that date until 1875 there appeared a constant suc- 
cession of valuable papers, or separate works, relating to minute 
animal or vegetable forms. His last was on marine and fresh-water 
dredgings from all countries, published in 1875, when eighty years 
of age. 
At the commencement of Ehrenberg’s splendid researches the 
achromatic microscope was quite in its infancy ; and, if we may rely 
on the conclusions to be drawn from a careful examination of the 
older microscopes in the late Loan Collection at South Kensington, 
something like one-half of Ehrenberg’s work must have been done 
with microscopes which nowadays would be looked upon as scarcely 
good enough for toys, much less for research. When we reflect on 
what he did with such imperfect instruments, and what many of 
our present microscopists do with their splendid apparatus, one cannot 
but feel that the eye at one end of the tube is, after all, the most 
important part of the whole optical arrangement. We all know very 
well that Ehrenberg was led into many errors, but, considering the 
means at his command and the extreme novelty and difficulty of some 
of his investigations, we may be surprised more by the truths dis- 
covered than by the mistakes made. 
What strikes us most is the vast extent and continuance of Ehren- 
berg’s researches. Independent of his great works on the Infusoria, 
on Microscopic Geology, and other kindred subjects, the number of 
separate memoirs published between 1820 and 1873 was no less than 
293; being, therefore, an average of five or six, continued over a 
period of no less than fifty-three years. We must forbear to notice in 
detail even a mere fraction of these publications. We can scarcely 
over-estimate the effect of all this work on the advancement of micro- 
scepical science. Perhaps one of the most important conclusions was 
that minute organisms have contributed very much to the formation of 
thick masses of stratified rocks, and that such deposits as our chalk 
are—or, perhaps, still more correctly, were originally—most closely 
similar to deposits now being formed in modern oceans. He was 
elected an Honorary Fellow of our Society in 1840, and died on June 
27, 1876, at the age of eighty-one years. 
Epwarp Newmay, F.L.S., &c., was born at Hampstead, on May 13, 
1801. At a very early age he evinced a taste for natural history, 
which was fostered and encouraged by both his father and mother. 
After his school days were passed he resided with his father at 
