May 



900] 



NATURE 



15 



PROF. A. MILNE-EDWARDS. 



IT is with sincere regret that we have to record the 

 death, at the age of sixty-four, of Prof. Alphonse 

 Milne-Edwards, the Director of the Paris Museum of 

 J^atural History, which took place at Paris on Saturday, 

 April 21, after a brief illness. The late professor was of 

 English descent, being the grandson of Mr. Bryan 

 Edwards, M.P., a West Indian planter who settled at 

 Bruges ; and, with this ancestry, it is curious to note how 

 extremely imperfect was his colloquial knowledge of the 

 English language. His father. Prof Henri Milne- 

 Edwards, was the well-known eminent zoologist of Paris, 

 who died in 1885; and father and son were for many 

 years associated in zoological work. 



Born in Paris in 1835, Alphonse Milne-Edwards took 

 his medical degree in 1859, and was nominated Pro- 

 fessor at the School of Pharmacy in 1865. In 1876 he 

 acted as deputy for his father as Professor of Zoology 

 at the Jardin des Plantes ; in the following year he suc- 

 ceeded the late Prof. P. Gervais as a member of the 

 Institute of the Paris Academy of Sciences ; and in 1885 

 he entered the Academy of Medicine. In 1891, being 

 already Professor of Zoology, he was appointed Director 

 of the Paris Museum of Natural History and of the 

 Menagerie in the Jardin des Plantes ; his ofificial title 

 as regards the latter post being Administrateur charge 

 de la Direction de la Menagerie au Mus^e d'His/oire 

 natiirellc. 



Having published, in 1864, an important memoir on 

 the anatomy and affinities of the Chevrotains, and a 

 second, in 1866, on the osteology of the Dodo, in 1867 

 Milne-Edwards issued the first fasciculus of his magnifi- 

 cent work, entitled " Recherches Anatomiques et Paleon- 

 tologiques pour servir k I'Histoire des Oiseaux Fossiles 

 de la France," which was completed in four volumes 

 (two of text and two of plates) in 1872. As mentioned by 

 Prof. A. Newton, this monumental work marked an epoch 

 in ornithology, for it showed the possibility of forming a 

 classification of birds by means of their "long bones." 

 Much interest was excited by the identification in this 

 work of remains of peculiar existing .African and Malagasy 

 genera of birds in the French Tertiaries. While this 

 work was in progress, Alphonse Milne-Edwards was 

 associated with his father in bringing out the " Re- 

 cherches pour servir a I'Histoire naturelle des Mammi- 

 feres," which was commenced in 1868 and completed m 

 1874. A large proportion of the latter was devoted to 

 the description of new types of mammals from Central 

 Asia, among them being the many strange forms, like 

 Aeluropus, then recently obtained by Pere David in the 

 Moupin district of Eastern Tibet. The period from 1866 

 to 1874 also saw the issue of " Recherches sur la Faune 

 ornithologique eteinte des fles Mascareignes et de 

 Madagascar." And the late professor's interest in the 

 Malagasy fauna was likewise shown in a paper on the 

 embryology of the Lemurs, published in 1871, and in his 

 contributions to Grandidier's " History of Madagascar," 

 still in course of publication. 



But it would be a mistake to suppose that the re- 

 searches of Prof. Milne-Edwards were by any means 

 restricted to mammals and birds. From an early period 

 in his career his attention had been directed to the study 

 of zoophytes and crustaceans ; and later on he had atten- 

 tively studied the animals adherent to submarine cables, 

 which had been raised after a sojourn at the bottom of 

 the sea. With this latter subject the study of the ocean 

 floor was intimately connected. And in 1880 he brought 

 before his Government the advisability of fitting out an 

 expedition for submarine surveying, with the result that 

 in the following year a party of savants, under his own 

 direction, embarked on the Travailleiir to survey the 

 Gulf of Gascony. The results obtained were so impor- 

 tant that the same vessel was again put at the disposal 



NO 1592. VOL. 62] 



of the professor, who completed the survey of the Gulf 

 of Gascony, and explored the sea-bottom of the Strait 

 of Gibraltar and of a considerable portion of the Medi- 

 terranean. In 1882 the TV^t^a/Z/^wr undertook a survey- 

 ing voyage of the Atlantic as far as the Canaries. The 

 year following the Talisman took the place of the Tra- 

 vailleur, and carried Prof. Milne-Edwards and his 

 associates to the coasts of Portugal, Morocco, and the 

 Canary and Cape Verde Islands, and then on to the 

 Sargasso Sea, whence it returned by way of the 

 Azores. The results of these dredging expeditions were 

 published under the title of " Expeditions scientifiques 

 du Travail leur et du Talisman pendant les anndes 1881, 

 1882 et 1883." 



For these deep-sea explorations, Milne-Edwards was 

 awarded the gold medal of the Royal Geographical 

 Society. In 1876 he was elected a Foreign Member of 

 the Zoological Society of London, and in 1882 a Foreign 

 Correspondent of the Geological Society. He paid 

 several visits to England, the last on the occasion of the 

 Zoological Congress at Cambridge in 1898. R. L. 



NOTES. 



The funeral of the Duke of Argyll will take place at the 

 family burial ground, Kilmun, on the Holy Loch, on Tuesday 

 next, May 8. 



The annual conversazione of the Institution of Electrical 

 Engineers will be held at the Natural History Museum, South 

 Kensington, on Tuesday, June 26. 



The Duke of Cambridge, president of the Sanitary Institute, 

 will occupy the chair at the Institute dinner on Friday, 

 May II. 



The University of Gottingen has awarded the Volbrecht 

 prize for scientific research to Dr. Gegenbauer, professor of 

 anatomy at Heidelberg. The prize is of the value of 12,000 

 marks (600/,) 



To commemorate the foundation of the k. k. geologischen 

 Reichsanstalt of Vienna, in 1849, a jubilee meeting will be held 

 in the great hall of the Institute on June 9, and representatives 

 of science or of scientific institutions are invited to be present. 



The Botanical Gazette records the death by drowning, in 

 September last, of Prof. Kyokichi Yatabe, the founder of the 

 Botanical Society of Japan. 



The annual meeting of the American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science will be held at Columbia Universtity, 

 New York, from June 25 to June 30. 



We learn, from the American Naturalist, that the herbarium 

 and the principal part of the botanical library of Columbia Uni- 

 versity have been transferred to the New York Botanic Garden, 

 and that, in future, the advanced work in botany of the Uni- 

 versity will be carried on in the laboratory of the Garden. 



The British Medical Journal states that the tenth award of 

 the Riberi prize of 20,000 lire (800/.) will be made by the Royal 

 Academy of Medicine of Turin on December 31, 1901, for the 

 best printed or manuscript work, or the most important dis- 

 covery, during the quinquennium 1S97-1901, in the domain of 

 experimental pathology, hygiene, or forensic medicine. 



The Franklin Institute has awarded John Scott medals and 

 premiums to Mr. A. V. Groupe for his improved braiding 

 machine, to Messrs, C. A. Bell and S, Tainter for their inven- 

 tion of the graphophone, and to Mr. A, M. Hopkins for his 

 pneumatic system for preventing the bursting of water-pipes by 

 freezing. Elliott Cresson medals have been awarded to Mr. 



