20 Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 



anniversary of his entry on the professorial career, he was made a 

 Privy Councillor by the King of Saxony and Councillor of the city of 

 Leipzig. On the same occasion his former pupils presented him with 

 a "Festschrift," which is remarkable for the number and varied 

 nationalities of the contributors. The volume in question contains a 

 complete list of Leuckart's published memoirs and separate works. 

 In 1873 he was Rector Magnificus of the university. 



Leuckart was characterised by good-heartedness and ceaseless in- 

 dustry and enthusiasm in zoological investigation. He inspired warm 

 regard in his pupils, whom he watched over with kindly and un- 

 flagging interest, not only whilst they were working with him but 

 throughout their subsequent careers. 



The more important only of Leuckart's long series of contributions 

 to the literature of Comparative Anatomy and Zoology can be here 

 referred to. Undoubtedly the most remarkable of his publications was 

 among the earliest. It is a little book called ' Die Morphologic und 

 Verwandtschaftsverhiiltmsse niederer Thiere,' printed at Brunswick in 

 1848. The power and originality of the author were clearly shown by 

 this pamphlet. He boldly attacked and demolished the Cuvierian 

 sub-kingdom of Radiata by separating and characterising the Coelentera 

 (or Ccelenterata as he in conjunction with Frey had termed them) as- 

 distinct from the Echinoderma. The conceptions which have since 

 ripened into the doctrine of the archenteron and the coelom are trace- 

 able to Leuckart's work, though important modifications in some 

 respects have arisen with the progress of knowledge. 



Leuckart originally stated, and repeated in 1869, that the cavity of 

 the Coelentera was "morphologically equivalent to the body-cavity 

 (Leibes-hohle) of other animals." Haeckel in his " Kalkschwamme,"' 

 vol. 1, p. 464, denied this, and declared that the cavity of Ccelentera 

 is homologous with the digestive cavity of other animals, whilst their 

 body-cavity has a totally independent origin. It is now generally 

 held, as a result of the embryological researches of Kowalewsky, 

 Balfour, and other English embryologists, that Leuckart's view was 

 the more nearly correct, since the cavity of the Coelentera is an 

 "archenteron," which by constriction becomes divided in the higher 

 animals into the permanent gut or " metenteron " and the " coelom " 

 or perigonadial and excretory cavity. 



Soon after this publication Leuckart wrote the article " Zeugung, " 

 for his teacher Wagner's ' Handworterbuch der Physiologic.' It is 

 remarkable for philosophic grasp and wide range of treatment. In- 

 1851 he produced a celebrated memoir "On the Polymorphism of the 

 Siphonophora, " a subject which about the same time engaged the 

 attention of Huxley in this country. In 1853, under the title "Zoo- 

 logische Untersuchungen, " he published a series of observations on 

 Siphonophora, Salpse, Heteropoda, Cephalopoda, Crustacea, Insecta, 



