156 Ohituarg Notices. 



The following are the Obituary Notices of the year pre- 

 pared by Mr Taylor : — 



WiLHELM Philipp Schimper was born at Dossenheim, a 

 village of Alsatia, in January 1808. He died at Paris on 

 the 20th March last ; and at the time of liis death was 

 Professor of Geology, and Director of the Museum of the 

 University of Strasbourg. He was placed on the list of our 

 Foreign Honorary Fellows on December 10, 1868, having 

 been elected a Foreign Member in the previous year. 



The " Bryologia Europtea," in six quarto volumes, 

 1836—55, describing every known species in detail, besides 

 adding beautiful pictorial illustrations of morphological 

 peculiarities, would alone be a sufficient monument of 

 Schimper's enthusiasm and genius. It occupied the twenty 

 busiest years of his life ; and, though it began with him as 

 only editor, he received so little extraneous assistance, that 

 he is really entitled to the full merit of its plan and com- 

 pletion. In 1857. he published the companion volume on 

 the "Sphagnum," a goodly quarto, also illustrated v/ith four- 

 teen minutely detailed plates by the author. This was 

 followed in 1860 by an abridged edition, in one volume in 

 Latin, of his work on " European Mosses," but elaborated 

 in the systematic fashion of a German professor. A second 

 and greatly enlarged edition of this synopsis of the "Euro- 

 pean Mosses," in two volumes, appeared in 1876. 



Schimper's "Traite de Palseontologie vegetale," published 

 in three large volumes in 1874, is as surprising a monument 

 of scientific industry, combined with the critical acumen only 

 to be obtained by nmcli practical work, as are his other books 

 already referred to. It gives descriptions in Latin, with 

 remarks in French of all the species of fossil plants known, 

 with a quarto atlas of 110 plates, illustrating the more in- 

 teresting vegetable tj^pes. The work more recently done 

 by our deceased Honorary Fellow on the new " Manual of 

 Palaeontology," of which he was conjoint author with Karl 

 A. Zittel, up to ferns, is another monument of his devo- 

 tion to fossil botany. This taste had been fostered by the 

 college course on the subject which German students attend, 

 by intercourse with such congenial spirits as Hugo Mohl 

 and Alexander Braun, and by the beautiful collection of 

 fossil plants with which the Strasbourg Museum was en- 



