192 



NA TURE 



{jfune 30, 1 88 1 



various localities in the Upper Greensand and Chalk of Europe, 

 and also occurs at Kome. 



The fossils collected by Mr. Richardson on Queen Charlotte's 

 Island have been shown by Mr. Whiteaves to represent tlie 

 very base of the Cretaceous series, and to include some forms 

 that are rather Jurassic than Cretaceous. The plants of ihis 

 group, though few and imperfect, seem to be chiefly Conifers, a5 

 in the oldest Cretaceous flora of Europe. 



Our present knowledge of the age of the American Cretaceous 

 flora may then be epitomised as follows ; — 



1. The oldest Cretaceous rocks known in North America, 

 those of Queen Charlotte's Ishnd, rcresent the Neocomian of 

 Europe, and have so far furnished no Angiospermous plants. 



2. The Shasta group of California, supposed to be the equi- 

 valent of the upper part of the Neocomian, has yielded no 

 plants. 



3. The coal-strata and plant-beds of Vancouver's Island, 

 probably a little later than the Dakota group of the interior, 

 contain many Angiosperms, and are of the age of the Gault or 

 Upper Greeusand. Lesquereux's identification of Vancouver's 

 Island plants in the Laramie of Colorado and Eocene of 

 Mississippi is evidently a mistake. There are no species 

 common to these very distinct formations. 



4. The Dakota group, the mechanical base of the Cretaceous 

 series of the interior of the continent, v\hich has yielded at least 

 100 distinct species of Angiospermous woody plants, is certainly 

 older than the Chalk of the Old World. 



5. The Karitan sands and Amboy clays of New Jersey, the 

 lowest mem.bers of the Cretaceous on tlie Atlantic coast, contain 

 a flora not less rich than that of the Dakota, with which it has a 

 few species in common. This group of plants has not yet been 

 described, but a large number of specimens are in my hands, 

 from which drawings and descriptions are being made for tlie 

 State of New Jersey. The flora is that of a temperate climate, 

 consisting mainly of Angiosperms, but it also includes many 

 beautiful Conifers. 



6. The Colorado group, or great series of marine Cretaceous 

 beds of the interior of the Continent, represents the strata known 

 in the Old World as the Gray and White Chalk, and the 

 Maestricht beds. Few plants have been obtained from tliis 

 group in the United States, but I am informed by Dr. Dawson 

 that an interesting collection of plants has been obtained from it 

 on Peace River, in Canada. These will soon be described by 

 him. 



7. The Laramie group, or " Lignite series " of the central part 

 of the continent, underlies unconformably the Coryphodon beds, 

 the base of the Eocene, and is in my opinion tlie upper member 

 of the Cretaceous system. Many of its plants have been de- 

 scribed by Mr. Lesquereux in his " Tertiary Flora," but so far 

 as my observation extends it contains no species identical with 

 any found in unmistakable Tertiary rocks. 



School of Mines, New York, May 20 J. S. Newberry 



GEORGE ROLLESTON, M.D., F.R.S. 



PROF. ROLLESTON'S death, which took place at 

 Oxford on June 16, and which we briefly announced 

 in our last number, may well be called premature, as he 

 ■was in the prime of life, and but a few months ago seemed 

 to all, except a few closely observant intimate associates, 

 still in the plenitude of his powers, and capable of much 

 good work in time to come. 



The son of a Yorkshire clergyman, he was born at 

 Maltby on July 30, 1829, and had therefore not com- 

 pleted his fifty-second year. His early aptitude for 

 classical studies, carried on under the instruction of his 

 father, must have been most remaricable if, as has been 

 stated in one of his biographies, he was able at the age of 

 ten to read any passage of Homer at sight. He was not 

 educated at one of the great public schools, but entered 

 at Pembroke College, Oxford, took a First Class in 

 Classics in 1850, and was elected a Fellow of his College 

 in 1 85 1. He then studied medicine at St. Bartholomew's 

 Hospital, joined the staff of the British Civil Hospital at 

 Smyrna during the latter part of the Crimean war, was 

 appointed assistant-physician to the Children's Hospital 

 in London, 1857, but took up his residence again at Oxford 

 in the same year on receiving the appointment of Lee's 



Reader in Anatomy at Christ Church. In i860 he was 

 elected to the newly-foimded Linacre Professorship of 

 Anatomy and Physiology, which he held to the time of 

 his death. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society 

 in 1862, and a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, in 1872. 

 He was a member of the Council of the University, and 

 its representative in the General Medical Council, and 

 also an active member of the Oxford Local Board. 



In 1 86 1 he married Grace, daughter of Dr. John Davy, 

 F.R.S. , and niece of Sir Humphry Davy, and he leaves a 

 family of seven children. 



The duties of the Linacre professorship involved the 

 teaching of a wide range of subjects included under the 

 terms of physiology and anatomy, huinan and compara- 

 tive, to which he added the hitherto neglected but im- 

 portant subject of anthropology, as well as the care of a 

 great and ever-growing museum. In the present condi- 

 tion of scientific knowledge it requires a man of very 

 versatile intellect and extensive powers of reading to 

 maintain anything like an adequate accjuaintance with the 

 current literature of any one of these subjects, much 

 more to undertake original observations on his own 

 account. Even a man of Rolleston's powers felt the 

 impossibility of any one person doing justice to the chair 

 as thus constituted, and strongly urged the necessity of 

 dividing it into three professorships, one of physiology, 

 one of comparative anatomy, and one of human anatomy 

 and anthropology. The work which he did however con- 

 trive to find time to publish, and by which he will be 

 chiefly known to posterity, is remarkable for its thorough- 

 ness. He never committed himself to writing without 

 having completely mastered everything that had been pre- 

 viously written upon the subject, and his memoirs bristle 

 with quotations from, and references to, authors of all ages 

 and all nations. The abundance with which these were 

 supplied by his wonderful memory, and the readiness with 

 which, both in speaking and writing, his thoughts clothed 

 themselves with appropriate words, sometimes made it 

 difficult for ordinary minds to follow the train of his argu- 

 ment through long and voluminous sentences, often made 

 up of parenthesis within parenthesis. 



The work which was most especially the outcome of 

 his professorial duties is the "Forms of Animal Life," 

 published at the Clarendon Press in 1870. Though 

 written chiefly with a view to the needs of the university 

 students, it is capable of application to more general 

 purposes, and is one, of the earliest and most complete 

 examples of instruction by the study of a series of types, 

 now becoming so general. As he says in the preface, 

 " The distinctive character of the book consists in its 

 attempting so to combine the concrete facts of zootomy 

 with the outlines of systematic classification, as to 

 enable the student to put them for himself into their 

 natural relations of foundation and superstructure. The 

 foundation may be wider, and the superstructure may 

 have its outlines not only filled up, but even considerably 

 altered by subsequent and more extensive labours ; but 

 the mutual relations of the one as foundation and the 

 other as superstructure which this book particularly aims 

 at illustrating, must always remain the same." 



Besides this work, Prof. Rolleston's principal contribu- 

 tions to comparative anatomy and zoology are the follow- 

 ing: — "On the Affinities of the Brain of the Orang 

 Utang," A'rz/. Hisl. Review^ 1S61 ; "On the Aquiferous 

 and Civiductal System in the Lamellibranchiate Mol- 

 luscs" (with Mr. C. Robertson), /'////. Trans. 1S62 ; "On 

 the Placental Structures of the Teurec {Cciitctes ecaiida- 

 tiis) and those of certain other Mammals, with Remarks 

 on the Value of the Placental System of Classification," 

 Trans. Zool. Soc. 1866 ; " On the Domestic Cats of 

 Ancient and Modern Times" {Journal of Anatomy, 

 1868); "On the Homologies of Certain Muscles Con- 

 nected with the Shoulder-Joint" {Trans. Linn. Soc, 

 1870); "On the Development of the Enamel in the 



