946 



NA TURE 



[December 29, 1923 



Obituary. 



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iiiiii)\c^ tin- la>i . i iii' n.ii |.i..ii( . i> 111 ill! f^tography 

 <»l ilic Ilini.il,i\,i .•: • ! 'Mm- .iitli rit \- on Tndmn 



MollllSr.i. I !- 



nidiitli I ! 'ii 



l.i.id ! ""tl» went 



III Imi... ... ...c v.n; .^. ...-,.. I ■..., Ausiun saw 



(t\i.r the next year in the second Burmese War. 

 Ills siiiiitilir tastes, u'liich u'crf hcrrditarv fur his 

 lather. K. A. (". (liKiwin Aiistcii, was a L:iiil(iL^i>t whu has 

 l( tt an ciKhiiiiiL; !(i)Utation owing to his i-xccptional 

 iiHi-ht I«(l him in 1857 to join the Indian Survey 

 1 ). |)artiiu nt. It was Ins privilege to survey northern 

 Ka>hnni . w here hf (hs(()vcred the Baltoro, Hispar, and 

 Biafra Glaciers — the greatest group of valley glaciers 

 in the world. They were afterwards traversed and 

 mapped by Sir Martin Conway, who named the tribu- 

 tary glacier to the Baltoro from Kj the Godwin-Austen 

 glacier. The glaciers were descrilied by Godwin- 

 Austen in a short paper in the Proceedings of the 

 Royal Geographical Society (vol. viii., 1864), the dis- 

 cussion on which is remarkable for Falconer's advocacy 

 of the pre-glacial age of the Alpine lake basins and 

 tluir preservation by the protective action of glaciers. 

 huriiiij; this survey Godwin-Austen fixed the position 

 and heights of many of the giant peaks of the Kara- 

 korums, including Kg, which had been previously 

 discovered by Montgomerie. It is often known as 

 Mt. Godwin-Austen, and according to the heights 

 adopted by the Indian Survey Department is the 

 second highest mountain in the world. 



While Godwin-Austen was working in this district 

 he made many mountain ascents, of which his highest 

 was on Mata, 20,600 ft., in 1862. In 1863-64 he was 

 engaged in the survey of the eastern parts of the 

 Himalaya around Darjeeling and in Bhutan, and, later 

 still, further east on the Khasia Hills and in Assam. 

 His views on the geographical structure and classifica- 

 tion of the Himalaya were stated forty years ago in 

 his presidential address to the Geographical Section 

 of the British Association, which is his most important 

 geographical paper. He contributed to the Geological 

 Society several papers which made important additions 

 to the geology of the Himalaya, including the dis- 

 covery of the extension into Kashmir of the Spiti 

 series, the most significant horizon in the Himalaya. 

 In 1884 he described the drifts exposed in a new 

 railway cutting near his home at Guildford, and the 

 paper was illustrated by sections, characterised by 

 the same precision and detail as those issued with his 

 Indian papers. 



After leaving the Indian Survey, Godwin-Austen's 

 main interest was in the land moUusca. He was 

 described as having " a unique knowledge of Indian 

 molluscs." He contributed to " The Fauna of British 

 India " the volume on the Testacellidse and Zonitidae. 

 The value of his work on that group is shown by his 

 election as president of the Malacological Society in 

 1897-9, ^^^ of the Conchological Society in 1908-9. 

 His later years were burdened by financial embarrass- 

 ment due to an unfortunately worded will. He 



\ he paternal estate of Shalford, which proved 

 income. 



which, whin I : iinu nil, iisfd up ni<>r« 11 



the whole of li from the property. He \v 



this trouble with in^ tiuiracteristic courage and chctr- 

 fulness. Great sympathy was also recently felt for 

 him, owing to the unfortunate loss of th' lio 



of sketches and maps made during his Ka !, ;. e, 



■/as clertcd I - . 18S0. and 

 received a bei dal from al 



Geographical Su . :. ... :,._. 



Herluf \\ 



It is with much regret thai ui: rcnr'! • 

 death, on November 10, at ( openh.i--n 

 Win-c. wlio for many years, and until his death, was 

 " \ iceinspektor " in liie Zoological Mu-seum of the 

 University of Copenhagen. .\s a lad Winge l>egan to 

 study the small mammals of Denmark, and '■•' '• 'ri;...t 

 papers upon this subject were full of [ 

 little later, in 1S77. while still a studerrt m Uit i m- 

 versity of CopenhaLim. he published an arrount of 

 some of the skull characters in the mole, shrt v 

 other Insectivora, in which he displayed no: 

 remarkable learninL^ hut a most clever technique. 

 In 1882 he gave liis views upon the mammalian denti- 

 tion and his theory of cusp homologies in a })aper 

 which will ever be regarded as a classi< . In tin ^ m <■ 

 year appeared an account of a collect! 



from Greece ; and in preparin'^ this \\ „ 



far afield investigating the and special 



adaptations of the species hti .,- ..nw t.uii he himself 

 regarded this piece of work as the foundation of the 

 important publications ne.xt to be noticed. 



I3etween 1887 and 191 5 Winge published a series 

 of works which ostensibly are descriptions of the fossil 

 bones collected by Lund in the caves of Lagoa Santa, 

 Minas Geraes, Brazil, and of the recent mammalia 

 obtained in the same region by Lund and Rein hard t. 

 Taking these mammals order by order (Rodents. i^^S; : 

 Chiroptera, 1892 ; Camivora. Primates. 1895 • Mar- 

 supials, including >hnotrenus. iSg; : Ungulates, 

 including Sirenia, i9o() ; laieniates, 1915), Winge 

 commenced each memoir witti a description of the 

 Brazilian material ; but, that finished, he proceedc^^ 

 in each case to give a review of the whole order, bringii 

 out his views of the evolution and relationships of thr 

 orders and of every fossil and li\'ing family and genus 

 in a wonderfully clear and concise style. He seems to 

 have prepared a complete monograph of each genus 

 dealt with ; and thi c compressed each mono- 



graph into a short ; , ;'h and very often into a 

 single sentence. But in this small space he contri\es 

 not only to state all that is essential, but to tlirow man\ 

 a brilliant beam across what was pn 

 Companion reviews of the Insectivora v.v.;> ....^ i,, 

 Cetacea (1919), the two orders not represented in the 

 Lagoa Santa material, have since been published b\ 

 Winge. That dealing witli the Cetacea has recently 

 been translated from the Danish b%- Mr. G. S. Miller 



NO. 2826, VOL. 112] 



