January 13, iy2ij 



.\.\l URE 



^11 



he was a fellow of University College, Oxlord. 

 While at the Clarendon Laboratory he became 

 interested in the study of crystals, and, as the 

 result, when, in i!S7!S, Mr. W. J. Lewis (now 

 professor of mineralogy at Cambridge) retired, 

 owing to ill-health, from the assistantship which 

 he held in the mineral department of the British 

 Museum, I'rof. Story-Maskelyne, who was then 

 keeper of minerals, induced Fletcher to apply for 

 the post. He obtained it, and only two years 

 later succeeded to the keepership. 



Almost immediately on taking charge of the 

 department I-'letcher was called upon to supervise 

 the removal of the mineral collection from Blooms- 

 bury to its present home at South Kensington. 

 What this meant may best be told in his own 

 words ' : " Some idea of the nature of this task 

 may be formed if it lie pointed out that the 

 cabinets of the table-ca.ses at Bliximsbury were 

 to be made use of in the new gallery, but that 

 the glazed table-tops were to be left behind ; that 

 the new table-tops were then lying on the gallerv 

 rttx)r at South Kensington, and had as yet no 

 supports ; that differences of illumination of the 

 old and the new galleries, and diflferences of con- 

 struction of the cabinets, made it necessary that 

 the relative positions of the cabinets in the gallery 

 at .South Kensington should be completelv dif- 

 ferent from the relative positions in the gallerv 

 at Bloomsbury ; that every cabinet had for some 

 lime to be turned upside down during the process 

 of iH-ing fitted to the new floor; that many of 

 them had to be cut in two because of the inter- 

 ference of the structural columns of the gallery, 

 and new mahogany ends had afterwards to be 

 made and fitted to them. Such a series of opera- 

 tions invo'ves great practical difficulties when the 

 s(K'cimens to be renioxed and arranged are nume- 

 rous, fragile, and require to be cauliouslv handled, 

 or are small, portable, and of great intrinsic value, 

 and must Ix' kept under Ux-k and key." Once 

 I the collections were put in order, hletcher 

 devoted his attention to selecting and setting out 

 series of specimens to facilitate the study of 

 meteorites, minerals, and rocks respectively, and 

 prepared a corresponding set of elementary hand 

 books which are models of clear and simple ex- 

 |K>sition of not readily understood subjects. In 

 ic)ot> he succeeded to the directorship of the 

 Natural History Mu.seum, which had been vacated 

 by Sir F. Ray Lankester two years before. Un- 

 fortunately, a severe illness a year or so before 

 his appointment left him with a crippled constitu- 

 tion, and s<H)n he appeared to lose that keenness 

 and energy which had previously characterised 

 him ; and by the time, in 191Q, he reached the full 

 age for retirement he was a tired man. 



Many honours were conferred upon Fletcher by 

 scientihc institutions an<l tmivcrsities at home and 

 abroad. He was elected a fellow of the Royal 

 5>ociety in i88t), and was a vice-president from 

 1910-1.*, and in 1912 he was awarded by the 

 (ieological .Sfx-iety the coveted Wollaston medal. 



> " HiHOTT of ib« CollcciKMn in iha Naiunl HiMory I>t|ia>1iiieDi> of 

 th« BritUh lMu««um " (ioo|\ vol. t., p. 149- 



NO. 2672, VOL. 106] 



In 1894 he was president of the Geological Section 

 of the British .\s.sociation at its meeting at Oxford. 

 The -Mineralogical Society owes him a special debt 

 of thanks, for to him its success and prosperity 

 arc largely due; he was its president from 1S85 88, 

 and from the latter year until 1909 served as its 

 secretary. To commemorate such long service 

 mineralogists and other friends subscribed and 

 presented him with his portrait. He was knighted 

 in 1910. 



Despite the calls of his oflicial duties, Fletcher 

 found time to devote himself to .scientific research, 

 mainly to the subject of meteorites, to their history 

 and constitution and the problems presented in 

 the analysis of these bodies, but also to certain 

 isolated, yet exceedingly im|M)rtant, questions in 

 crvstallography. Until the publication of his 

 Optical Indicatrix in 1K92 the whole theory 

 of the optical characters of biaxial crystals as pre- 

 sented in the text-books was based on faulty and 

 contradictory premises. With characteristic in- 

 dustry he went back to the original source, and 

 read all Fresncl's early papers on this subject, 

 and found that the latter had followed a perfectly 

 logical and convincing course in his approach to 

 his theory, and had departed from it only when 

 desirous of providing a physical basis for his 

 fundamental hypothesis. I'Metcher, in his treatise, 

 shows that the wave-surface for a biaxial crystal 

 can in the manner originally put forward by 

 I'Vesnel be derived from a simple extension of 

 Huyghcns's theorem, and his method is followed 

 in all modern text-books on crystallography and 

 the optical characters of crystals. He was gifted 

 with considerable manipulative skill in delicate ex- 

 perimental work, the best example of which was 

 his remarkable investigation of the morphological 

 and chemical properties of the crystallised form 

 of native zirconia, which was first discovered by 

 him, and to which he gave the name "baddeley- 

 ite " ; he obtained the whole of the requisite in- 

 formation from a study of a single, ill-developed 

 crystal, which was all the material at his dispo.sal, 

 the analysis being made on the tiny fragments 

 that had adhered to the wax of the crystal-holder. 



Sir Lazarus Fletcher was twice married, first to 

 Miss Agnes Ward Holme, who died in 191 5, leav- 

 ing a daughter, and afterwards, in 191A, to her 

 sister, Edith ; his widow and daughter survive 

 him. \ man of studious habit, of quiet geniality, 

 and H;ift(d with a subtle North-countrv humour, 

 he will be mourned by a large circle of friends. 



TnK death is announced, at the age of seventy- 

 seven, of Mk. Thomas .\. O'Doxohoe. known by 

 his work in microscopy and bacteriology. Mr. 

 O'Donohoe made investigations on the tubercle 

 bacillus and on the anatomy, habits, and meta- 

 morphosis of the hou.sc-fly, and at the time of 

 his death was studying the winter stages of this 

 insect. He was an authority on the optics of 

 the microscope and photographic camer.i, and did 

 much work on the mounting of objects for micro- 

 scopic research. 



