May 4, 1899] 
NATURE He 
o 
SURGEON-MA/JOR G. C. WALLICH, M.D. 
oe passed away in his eighty-fourth year, at 
Nottingham Place, Marylebone, on March 31, 
George Charles Wallich, L.R.C.S. Ed., Surgeon-Major 
on the Retired List of Her Majesty’s Indian Army ; and in 
his decease zoology has lost an honest devotee whose 
work has left its impress on the progress of the science. 
He was the eldest son of Nathaniel Wallich, F.R.S., 
Knight of the Royal Danish Order of Dannebrog, dis- 
tinguished during the early half of the century for his 
work on Indian botany, he being superintendent of 
the Botanic Gardens, Calcutta, where G. C. Wallich was 
born in November 1815. He was educated at Beverley 
in Yorkshire, at Reading Grammar School, and at 
King’s College, Aberdeen, and the Edinburgh University, 
where he graduated M.D. in 1836, becoming the follow- 
ing year a Licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons 
of that city. In 1838 he entered the Indian Army, and 
served as assistant-superintending surgeon in the 
Sutle} Campaign, and in 1847 he went through the 
Punjab wars, receiving the medal in commemoration of 
each. Eight years later he acted as field-surgeon dur- 
ing the Sonthal Campaign; and, invalided home in 
1857, he two years afterwards settled at Guernsey, and | 
afterwards at Kensington. 
_ His scientific career dates from 1844, in which year he 
produced a paper dealing with “Some experiments 
tending to prove that the venous circulation is de- 
pendent on a vital act.” His period of active and 
most continuous investigation, however, dates from the 
years 1858 to 1883, and his forty-eight papers produced 
during that time mostly deal with important questions of 
structure and distribution of the Protozoa, and allied 
organisms especially conspicuous in the leading topics 
in the marine biology of the time. Those which 
remain were devoted to the allied consideration of ques- 
tions bearing on the formation of the sedimentary de- 
posits formed by the lower organisms in both passing 
and past periods of the world’s history, with here and 
there an occasional departure into the higher groups of 
animals. It was in the year 1860 that Wallich started 
upon the line of inquiry by which his authority was 
established. Being recommended by Sir R. Murchison 
and Huxley for the post of naturalist to H.M. Budldog, 
about to survey the ground for the North Atlantic cable 
between Great Britain and America, he sailed under 
command of Sir F. L. McClintock, R.N., in June 1860, 
returning to London in November of that year. As the 
result of this voyage, he was the first to demonstrate that 
ocean depths below tooo fathoms were actually inhabited. 
The facts concerning temperature, pressure, and the 
general conditions at these depths at the time known and 
surmised had led to the belief that animal life was there- 
at impossible, and Wallich, in proving the contrary, laid 
the foundations of our modern deep-sea research. Work- 
ing out the soundings obtained during this memorable 
voyage, he later published the first part of a pro- 
jected book, entitled ““The North Atlantic Sea Bed,” 
by which he became famous. Although never completed, 
this will remain a standard work in the literature of 
deep-sea investigation, and a lasting testimony to its 
author’s acumen and powers of observation. While 
most fascinated by the geographical and lithological 
aspects of his task, Wallich was by no means neglectful 
of the more purely biological, and of the structure and 
physiological manifestations of the individual organism. 
Contemporary of the elder Carpenter, of Allman, and 
others who early in the latter half of the present century 
essayed the pioneer’s task of unravelling the mysteries 
of life as revealed in their essence by the unicellular 
organism, his contributions towards the determination 
of the excretory nature of the contractile vacuole, and 
his attempt, at a period at which our micro-chemical 
methods were in their infancy, to differentiate the 
NO. 1540, VOL. 60] 
nucleus by means of an electric discharge, will always be 
interesting chapters in the history of physiological 
inquiry. Trenchant in his literary style, prone to 
discussion, we find him in controversy with his con- 
temporary workers—conspicuously as concerning his 
views upon the “ Bathybius,” which Huxley, in later years, 
admitted his “bogey,” and the Coccospheres, upon which 
recent investigation has proved his views to have been 
largely sound. He did well in his time, and his work will 
endure. 
While neither distinction nor special recognition were 
meted out to him during the active years of his life, he 
was in 1898 awarded the Gold Medal of the Linnean 
Society of London, “‘in recognition of his researches into 
the problems connected with bathybial and pelagic life.” 
He was an Hon. Fellow of the Microscopical Society, and 
a Corresponding Member of the Royal Society of Liége. 
NOTES. 
Ir is announced that, in accordance with the amended 
Standard Time Act, Adelaide time was advanced half an hour 
at midnight on Sunday. 
WE learn fromthe Astronomische Nachrichten that the Fiirstlich 
Jablonowskisebe Gesellschaft offers for 1902 a prize of 1000 
marks for an essay bearing on Poincaré’s investigations of 
Neumann’s method of the arithmetic mean. The scope of the 
essays is defined bythe society as follows :—That the investiga- 
tions contained in Poincaré’s work of 1896, entitled ‘‘ La 
méthode de Neumann et le probleme de Dirichlet,” might be 
materially developed in some direction or other. 
PARTICULARS concerning the work of the Belgian Antarctic 
Expedition have been given to the Brussels Geographical 
Society by Lieut. Gerlache, commander of the expedition. 
The Zzmes gives the following summary of Lieut. Gerlache’s 
report: The expedition left St. John’s Bay on January 14, 1898, 
and on the 21st explored the South Shetland Islands. On 
January 15, in 55° 5’ south latitude and 65° 19’ west longitude, 
soundings to the depth of 4040 metres were taken. The Belgica 
left on the 23rd for Hughes Bay, discovering a strait separating 
the lands of the east from an unknown archipelago. The land 
to the east was named Danco Land. Magnetic observations 
were made and interesting botanical, geological, and photo- 
graphic .results were obtained. On February 13 the Belgica 
went in the direction of Alexander I. Land, exploring the belt 
of bank ice towards the west. On March 10 the ship became 
fast in the ice in latitude 71° 34’, longitude 89° 10’. The sun 
disappeared on May 17, and there was continual night until 
July 21. M. Danco died on June 5, and his remains were 
deposited in a tomb of ice. The Aedgica, after leaving her 
winter quarters, again became fast in the ice in 103” west longi- 
tude. She reached open water on March 14. The expedition 
made successful magnetic and meteorological observations, and 
obtained collections of pelagic and deep-sea fauna and samples 
of submarine sediments. On February 26 Black Island was 
explored, and on the following day the Sedgéca entered the 
Cockburn Channel, arriving at Punta Arenas, in Patagonia, on 
March 28. 
Ar the annual meeting of the members of the Royal Institution 
held on Monday, the Duke of Northumberland, President, pre- 
siding, it was announced that next month the Institution will com- 
plete one hundred years of its existence, the first meeting of its 
members in the building in Albemarle Street having been held 
on June 5, 1799. The managers have decided that this event, 
so interesting and memorable in the life of the Institution and 
in the history of science in this country, shall be duly celebrated. 
