Drcemhir 29, 1898] 



NA TURE 



the personal charm and pifted influence of his wife, 

 to whom he owed much of his popularity and success. 

 Playfair and Shand may be named among the more 

 regular attendants at these gatherings ; but Allman, a 

 born field-naturalist, full of vigour, yearning for the open, 

 found his greatest contentment in the field, and in dredg- 

 ing eNpeditions, in which both in Ireland and Scotland he 

 took the most ardent interest. 



As a worker Allman was untiring and prolific, and be- 

 tween the years 1S35-1873, apart from his monographs, 

 which are alone monumental, he produced considerably 

 over 100 papers, mostly to be found in the publications 

 of the Royal and other learned Societies of London, 

 Dublin and Edinburgh, in the Annals and Magazine rf 

 Natural History^ and elsewhere ; and while in later years 

 he became less prolific, we find him working to the last, 

 and as late as 1897 contributing (Phoenix-like to the 

 younger generation of naturalists) a paper {Jour. Linn. 

 Soc. Zool., vol. x.w. p. 517) on the hybernaculum of the 

 common snail, embodying a most interesting observation 

 overlooked, because always present, by the multitude who 

 had yearly dissected the animal. iVIany of the miscel- 

 laneous papers by which he will be best remembered are 

 " Reports,'' such as those of the " Porcupine " ; and by 

 association with Bowerbank, the elder Carpenter, Han- 

 cock, Hincks, Gwyn Jeffreys, Wyville Thomson, and 

 others, he will be ranked among the earlier pioneers in 

 the study of the marine zoology of Britain, whom he 

 was almost the last survivor. His work upon the fresh- 

 water forms, especially as involving the Polyzoa, and his 

 long intimacy with his great personal friend Busk, is 

 little less noteworthy and historically important. Con- 

 temporary of Owen, friend nf Huxley, correspondent of 

 the elder Agassu, truly does it seem that with his decease 

 a link with the historic past has been lost ; but among 

 giants who survive him Hooker remains, as one who, 

 with Alex. Agassiz, Mcintosh, and Norman, has been his 

 counsellor and friend. 



Allman was as versatile as voluminous and proficient, 

 since his papers deal with well-nigh all the great groups 

 of animals, between and including the Protozoa and 

 Mammalia. Recent and fossil forms had for him a 

 like interest ; and to have passed as a solid worker from 

 the study of the arteries of the .AriTiadillos through that 

 of a fossil Seal, an Ophiurid, and the Graptolites, to the 

 Peridiniaceie, working the meanwhile at all sorts of 

 Invertebrates, at questions physiological, anatomical, 

 developmental, and taxonomic, taking by the way the 

 study of parasitism, fermentation, and even of snow- 

 crystal formation, is to have established a record worthy 

 of the emulation of the serious science student. All- 

 man's first paper was a botanical one, " On the Mathe- 

 matic Relations of Forms of Cells of Plants," and it is 

 worthy of note that in this he in a sense anticipated one 

 of the most recent among our biological departures. He 

 is to be seen at his best as a casual investigator of his 

 time, in his papers on the development and pakeontology 

 of the Crinoids and on the Potamogale, a young speci- 

 men of which he described. His greater reputation, how- 

 ever, rests upon his monumental investigations into the 

 classification and morphology of the Ci-elenterata and 

 Polyzoa, upon which he has left a mark for all time. 

 His first paper on the Polyzoa appeared in 1S43 — 'i'^ 

 great monograph on the fresh-water members of the 

 class in 1856 ; while his first paper on the Hydrozoa 

 was published in 1844, and his epoch-making " Gymno- 

 blastic or Tubularian Hydroids" was completed in 1872. 

 During the thirteen years thus apparently occupied in 

 the preparation of the first and the twenty-eight in that 

 of the second, he was active in the production of 

 numerous papers dealing with both groups of animals, and 

 on the Ccclenterata alone he published up to the period 

 named close upon fifty papers all told. His original 

 descriptions o( Ji/iaMopleura, Myriot/iela, Limnocodiuni, 



NO. 1522, VOL. 59] 



sufficient in themsehes to have- mnd'e- him famous, 

 stand conspicuous in contemporary scientific literature, 

 and in his reports upon the Hydroids of the Challenger 

 expedition and on the Hydroids obtained during the 

 exploration of the Gulf Stream under the direction of the 

 United States Government, his work will remain memor- 

 able in the later progress of marine zoology. Of his 

 inagmim opus the " Gymnoblastic or Tubularian 

 Hydroids," it may be said that its appearance marked 

 an epoch in the history of the scientific investigation 

 of the Ctclenterata. This glorious work, pre-eminent 

 among the magnificent monographs of the Ray Society, 

 came as a revelation to the zoologists of the time. Its 

 classical companions, the " British Naked-eyed Medusa " 

 of Forbes and the "Oceanic Hydrozoa" of Huxley, had 

 paved the way for its appearance, by extending our 

 knowledge and simplifying our conceptions of the com- 

 plex structure of the Colonial Hydrozoa. Johnston's 

 " British Zoophytes " was still a leading work of reference 

 on the group, and Reay Greene's " Manual of the 

 Crelenterata " had enticed to the study of the class many 

 a student who might have strayed into other paths. 

 AUman's monograph, with its 400 pages of text, clear, 

 comprehensive, and logical, with its twenty-three ex- 

 quisite coloured plates (faithful copies of their author's 

 original drawings, which even in those days had to be 

 engraved in Germany), came as the fulfilment of a great 

 promise. Its first part, dealing in general terms with 

 the morphology, physiology, and chorology of the 

 Hydrozoa, with its masterly "Glossology," ranks among 

 the most perfect and philosophic of all modern zoological 

 treatises. The exquisite beauty of its illustrations, in 

 respect to which it vies with other scientific works of 

 its time, is no less remarkable than the consummate 

 pains bestowed upon its pages. It is a perfectly ideal 

 treatise, finished and artistically complete in all its parts, 

 and it is not too much to say that it revolutionised and 

 placed upon a solid foundation for all time our know- 

 ledge of one of the most perplexing of nature's handi- 

 works. Its influence on contemporary investigation ir> 

 zoology has been far reaching, and had its author 

 achieved nothing beyond it he would have left an in- 

 effaceable mark upon time. Much of the work which 

 constitutes its foundation was done in Irish waters, 

 which thereby became classical ground in the investi- 

 gation of the British Ctelenterates, so successfully con- 

 tinued at present for the .Actinozoa by Haddon and his 

 pupils and associates, and for the Hydrozoa by Brown 

 and the Misses Delap. 



Beyond his professorial and research work, Allmar* 

 was active in the popularisation of zoology. He was- 

 among the earlier supporters of the British Associ- 

 ation, his first papers having been read before it. He 

 in 1873 presided over its Biological Section, and was in 

 1879 President of its Sheffield meeting. He was in 

 1855 appointed one of the Commissioners of Scottish 

 Fisheries, which post he held until the abolition of the 

 Board in 1881, and in 1876 was one of those selected to- 

 inquire into the working of the Queen's Colleges in Ire- 

 land. During the years 1 874-1 88 1 he was President of 

 the Linnean .Society, succeeding Bentham. In this 

 capacity he was not altogether a success as a chairman ; 

 but by his solicitations on behalf of the Society — and his 

 presidential addresses — he did much to further its 

 welfare. Those on the Protozoa, delivered consecutively 

 during his first two years of office, which, together with 

 his remarkable monograph on the fresh-water Medusa 

 (Limnocodiuni SoiL'crhyi), which also appeared in the 

 Society's Journal, admirably illustrated by woodcuts 

 from the facile hand of Ferrier, amply testify to his 

 desire to be of use to the Fellows of his Society, so- 

 adequately expressed in the peroration to his 1877' 

 address. 



Allman served on the Councils of the Royal Societies. 



