660 Ol'i/iuin/. 



XXXW.— Obifxari/. 

 Dr. W. BlasiCs and Mr. .\llax O. Hume. 



Dr. WiLHELM Blasius. 

 WjLiiELJi Blasivs was boni at Bnmsnick on July th.e .5tli, 

 1845 — tlie second son of Heinrich Blasius, Director of the 

 Dncal Museum o£ Natural History, who was well-known to 

 all Naturalists by liis book on the Mammals of Europe. 

 Like his brotlier Rudolph, whose name is also familiar to us, 

 AVilhelm studied medicine at Gottingen, ^Vurzburg, and 

 Zurich, and became a Doctor of Medicine in 1868. In 1869 

 and 1870 he was lecturer at the University of Wiirzburg. 

 He joined the German army, as military physician, during 

 the Franco-German War in 1870-71, and was awarded the 

 Order of the Iron Cross for his excellent services. On the 

 sudden death of his father in April 1871, Wilhclm Blasius 

 was selected by the Ducal government as his successor in 

 several positions. In addition to his chief duty as Professor 

 of Botany and Keeper of the Botanical Gardens, Wilhelm 

 lectuied on Zoology, and became Director of the Ducal 

 ^Museum of Natural History, which had been joined with, 

 the Ducal technological high school (Carolina ^Vilhelmina), 

 although the latter required only Botany for the education 

 of pharmacists. On account of so many official dutic*, 

 AVilhehn Blasius had little spare time for literary work, still 

 he published many good scientific papers, most of them 

 dealing with Ornithology, and chiefly on the Birds of tlie 

 ^lalay Archipelago (Celebes, Borneo, Palawan, etc.), mainly 

 collected by Dr. Platen (for A. Nehrkorn of Braunschweig). 

 Amongst these were examples of a number of new^ species, 

 the names of which, however, having been partially pub- 

 lished in a local newspaper, lost their priority. The chief 

 paper of Blasius was his ^Monograph of Alca impennis in 

 the ' Ncue Naumann'. Beside Ornithology Blasius worked 

 a good deal in Arclueology and Paheontology, in the latter 

 as Director of tlie excavations in the celebrated stalactite 



