September 15, 192 1] 



NATURE 



93 



ness. The last minimum, in 530 a.d., was a time 

 of favourable conditions and a revival of civilisa- 

 tion in Scandinavia and Ireland, of little ice and 

 good weather in the neighbouring- seas, and of 

 drought in Asia. 



Looking back over the whole period since the 

 ice-sheets dwindled to inconsiderable dimensions, 

 we find that there have been considerable varia- 

 tions in the climate of Xorth-w-est Europe on 

 either side of present conditions, which have been 

 reflected in the ups and downs of civilisation in 

 these regions. The earlier and greater changes 

 are easily explicable at first by the gradual with- 



drawal of the ice, and then by appreciable changes 

 in the land and sea distribution, but the more 

 recent variations, of smaller magnitude and dura- 

 tion, pass insensibly into the slow fluctuations of 

 the past thousand years, and for these some other 

 cause must be adduced, e.g., Pettersson's, 

 possibly connected with the sun. Such a 

 cause has probably always been in operation, 

 but has been masked by the greater changes 

 of geological time, so that its operation is 

 traceable only in favourable circumstances, 

 or in the magnified perspective of the last 

 thirtv centuries. 



Obituary. 



Henry Woodward. 



FULL of years and honours, Dr. Henry Wood- 

 ward, late keeper of geology in the British 

 Museum, died on September 6 at Bushey, Herts. 

 He retained his faculties almost until the end, and 

 continued to follow with interest the progress of 

 the science to which he had devoted his life. 



Henry Woodward was born at Norwich on 

 November 24, 1832, the youngest son of Samuel 

 Woodward, the well-known geologist and anti- 

 quary. His father died while he was still a child, 

 and his education at the Norwich Grammar School 

 ended at the age of fourteen, when he went to 

 reside with his eldest brother, S. P. Woodward, 

 who was then professor of natural history in the 

 Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester. Here 

 he pursued studies in natural science, to which he 

 had a decided inclination, and on his brother's re- 

 moval to London in 1848 as assistant in the British 

 Museum, Henry accompanied him in the hope of 

 obtaining some congenial employment. In 1850, 

 however, he was compelled to return to Norwich 

 and accept a clerkship in Gurney's Bank, where he 

 remained for seven years and devoted himself to 

 natural history only in his scanty leisure. At last, 

 in 1858, he realised his ambition and became 

 assistant in the geological department of the 

 British Museum, where he soon took full advan- 

 tage of his opportunities for scientific research, 

 and began to make numerous contributions to 

 palaeontology. In 1880 he succeeded Mr. G. R. 

 Waterhouse as keeper, and held this office until 

 his retirement from the museum in 1901. 



Dr. Woodward's interests were always very 

 wide, and his firsf publication was a small 

 pamphlet in i860 on "The Prize Microscopes of 

 the Society of Arts, with Plain Directions for 

 Working with Them." About the same time he 

 began to write semi-popular articles on various 

 new fossils received bv the British Museum, and 

 made several valuable contributions to the Intel- 

 lectual Observer, the Popular Science Review, and 

 other journals. Among these may be specially 

 mentioned his general account of .Atchaeopteryx 

 in 1862. He continued to prepare notes on new 

 features exhibited by fossils of all kinds added to 

 the museum, and among the earliest was his 



NO. 2707, VOL. 108] 



description of the skull of the mammoth found at 

 Ilford, showing for the first time the true inward 

 curvature of the tusks. He was especially inter- 

 ested in the mammalian remains discovered by 

 Sir Antonio Brady in the Pleistocene deposits at 

 Ilford, and he wrote an introduction to ^^'illiam 

 Davies's catalogue of the collection published in 

 1874. He also devoted much attention to the later 

 mammalian remains found during the excavation 

 of reservoirs in the valley of the Lea, and he con- 

 tributed an account of the ancient fauna of Essex 

 to the Proceedings of the Essex Field Club. One 

 of his later papers of the same series contained 

 a description and discussion of a nearlv complete 

 skeleton of the extinct Sirenian Rhytina from 

 Behring Straits, which was published by the Geo- 

 logical Society in 1885. 



From the beginning, however. Dr. Woodward 

 made a very special study of the Crustacea, 

 and his chief contributions to science are detailed 

 descriptions and comparisons of extinct representa- 

 tives of this class. In 1863 he published his first 

 paper on a Macruran from the Lias of Lyme 

 Regis in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological 

 Society. From 1865 onwards he prepared several 

 reports on British Fossil Crustacea for the British 

 Association. Between 1866 and 1878 he published 

 his well-known monograph of the Merostomata 

 under the auspices of the Palaeontographical 

 Society. In 1877 he contributed to the British 

 Museum catalogues a list of the British Fossil 

 Crustacea. In 1883-84 he wrote again for the 

 Palaeontographical vSociety a monograph of 

 British Carboniferous Trilobites, and afterwards 

 joined Prof. T. Rupert Jones in a monograph of 

 the British Palaeozoic Phyllopoda for the same 

 society. So long ago as 1865 he co-operated with 

 Mr. J. W. Salter in a chart of the genera of Fossil 

 Crustacea, and in 1877 he wrote the article on 

 Crustacea for the ninth edition of the Encvclo- 

 paedia Britannica. He also made a special study 

 of many other arthropoda, and published several 

 papers on insects, arachnids, and myriapods from 

 Carboniferous formations. 



Dr. Woodward's influence on the progress of 

 geology and palaeontology was by no means con- 

 fined to his writings. In 1864 he joined Prof. 



