204 



NA TURE 



[December 29, 1898 



of London and Edinburgh, and of the Royal Irish 

 Academy, and he officiated as examiner in natural 

 history for the Queen's University of Ireland, the 

 University of London, the army and navy and Indian 

 Medical Service, and for the Indian Civil Service. He 

 was in 1854 elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and 

 in 1873 received the Society's Royal Medal. He was m 

 1877 awarded the Brisbane Gold Medal of the Royal 

 Society of Edinburgh, and in 1878 the Cunningham 

 Gold Medal of the Royal Irish Academy, while in 1896 

 he received the Gold Medal of the Linnean Society he 

 had served so well. In 1879 there was conferred upon 

 him the Hon. LL.D. of the University of Edinburgh. 



On his retirement into private life AUman settled in 

 Dorsetshire, on the genial slope of the ridge overlooking 

 Poole Harbour, there to devote himself to his outdoor 

 pursuits and to horticulture, which was with him a 

 passion ; and it is not a little remarkable that he, who in 

 earlier years had committed himself to the views con- 

 cerning man's place in nature expressed in a short paper he 

 in iSSgread before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, should 

 have had for friend and neighbour in the closmg years of 

 his life Alfred Russel Wallace, whose views on Darwmism 

 applied to man were so akin to his own. But it is not in 

 this interesting association of these two great men that 

 the Dorsetshire \illage will alone be hallowed ground to 

 the zoologist of the future, for it also bears testimony to 

 AUmann's loving devotion to his wife, in a manner which 

 associates her directly with his triumphs and pursuits. 

 For her use he therein had built, midst his beautiful 

 garden, a substantial brick house, with a tiled terrace so 

 arranged that she might sit and read and talk to him 

 while occupied with his favourite pursuits. The garden 

 itself is a perfect picture of undulating beauty, covering 

 an area of some five or six acres, its owner having been 

 particularly careful to avoid all suggestion of suburbanism 

 in its design. Bamboos, a Grumera, rhododendrons of 

 great rarity and value, carefully hedged around for pro- 

 tection against cold and wind, rivulets whose banks are 

 flanked by many a botanical treasure, a stream here, the 

 occasional pollution of which filled him with agony ex- 

 pressed in strongest remonstrance— a pond there, the in- 

 habitants of which were individually the care of its 

 owner—the whole a little paradise— one pictures the 

 grand old man, resolute to the last, seated on his favourite 

 tree stump or rustic seat, as for hours he used to watch 

 the unfolding -of the tender bud or the ripple of the in- 

 nocent streamlet. Every plant was known to him, every 

 label bore his handwriting, and all around was the special 

 object of his tender care. 



Great as was .-Mlman's love of nature and freedom, the 

 distinguishing features of his character were his manli- 

 ness and gentlemanly consideration for others, and m 

 combination with an artistic temperament amounting to 

 the poetic, these gave to his individuality a rare charm. 

 In testimony to the former combination, theie stands in 

 his drawing-room, foremost among the treasures he prized 

 most highly, a clock, presented to him on the occasion of 

 his retirement from the Edinburgh chair, which bears 

 the following inscription : 



To George J. AUman, Esq., M.I). 



rrofcssor of Natural History 



In the University of Eilinburgh, 



This Timepiece is respectfully presented 



By a few students 



Now and formerly attending his lectures, 



As a small mark of their sincere regard for him 



AS A CE.NTl.E.MAN, 



And their admiration of his talents 



And ability as a naturalist. 



29 July, 1870. 



His poetic fancy had led him in his later years to 

 commit his thoughts to verse, which it was one of the 

 concluding ambitions of his life to see in print. But in 



NO. 1522, VOL. 59] 



vain — since the small volume of his poems, which he had 

 printed for private circulation, only reached the house on 

 the day of his decease. As to the literary merits of this 

 opinions might dift'er, but his verses soar above the 

 peevish Heineesques of Albrecht and the laboured 

 mnemonics of Anderson, two among modern zoologists 

 who have been constrained to write poetry, and they have 

 a special value in that they are the expression of the 

 poetic effusions of his mind prompted by actual work 

 in the field and on the water which made him famous, 

 and of which they are largely descriptive. None other 

 than Johannes MuUer, the father of comparative anatomy, 

 has remarked : " Die Phantase is ein unentbehrliches 

 Gut"; and the thought arises that the discipline of bio- 

 logical science soars above that of the more rigid and 

 strictly mathematical in the extent to which it stimulates 

 the imagination, one of the highest of the intellectual 

 faculties. 



AUman endeavoured to work to the last, and to the 

 end his brain power remained perfect and his sight and 

 hearing good. It is extraordinary how his eyesight re- 

 mained practically unimpaired by his constant micro- 

 scopic work extending over some seventy years. Though 

 latterly weakened by asthma, he would day by day sit at 

 his favourite table and write, and he leaves unfinished a 

 book apparently intended for publication in one of the 

 scientific series. His wife predeceased him in 1890, and 

 he had no family ; but he was especially fortunate in the 

 loving care of nieces and others who had learned to take an 

 interest in his life work, and who afterwards made his home 

 bright and happy. He had this autumn planned some con- 

 siderable additions to the garden of which he was so fond, 

 dedicating a portion of it to a favourite grand-niece,"Erica," 

 and there can be little doubt that he never imagined 

 himself failing. But a few hours after what proved to 

 be a f.irewell visit to his dearly beloved plants, he died 

 quietly in his arm-chair. A steady loss of muscular power 

 throughout his whole system during the past few months 

 apparently extended somewhat suddenly to the heart, 

 and took from the world of science an earnest worker, a 

 man in whom the artistic and philosophic temperament 

 were exceptionally combined, and whose name and 

 influence for good will endure. G. B. H. 



DR. H. W. VOGEL. 



E\'ERY one interested in photography— and in these 

 days who is not ? — must deeply regret that so 

 eminent a worker as Dr. \'ogel has passed away. He 

 was one of the pioneers in the band of investigators in 

 what may, perhaps, be called the second period of the 

 development of photography, dating from the time of the 

 daguerreotype to the introduction of gelatine dry plates. 

 When Fox Talbot and I )aguerre made known their wonder- 

 ful methods of making nature draw her own pictures, he 

 was a lad of six or seven years of age, and it was thirty- 

 four years after this that Dr. \'ogel announced his dis- 

 covery that, by the use of certain colouring matters, it was 

 possible to make a photographic plate sensitive to other 

 colours than those to which it had previously been con- 

 sidered as sensitive. This discovery was of so radical a 

 nature that a considerable number of eminent experiment- 

 alists were quoted as having failed to corroborate the ob- 

 servation, and the general idea at the time seemed to be 

 that X'ogel's announcement was due to an error in his work. 

 .\t the present day there is no need to enlarge upon the 

 importance of colour sensitisers, for, practically speaking, 

 the whole art of the correct monochromatic rendering of 

 colours by photography, and of the various indirect 

 methods of producing pictures in natural colours by pho- 

 tographic means, are founded upon their use. The fact 

 that it is rather an increase of sensitiveness than the 

 actual conferment of sensitiveness that is effected, and 

 that Dr. \'ogel's theory of the action has not commended 



