November 28, 19 12] 



NATURE 



36- 



The question of works for the protection of 

 forest from fire naturally has to be carefully gone 

 into, and Mr. Broun 's chapter on this subject is 

 interesting and instructive, as also is the last 

 chapter, in which the measures necessary for the 

 fixation of unstable soils, whether of blown sand 

 or of precipitous slopes, are described. 



The book is illustrated by excellent wood-cuts, 

 as well as by photographic reproductions of forest 

 scenes, and these have chiefly come from Ceylon, 

 representing a more or less wet country, or the 

 Sudan, representing a dry one. We should have 

 liked to see more reference to Indian experience 

 and practice, for although no doubt the efforts of 

 experienced foresters like Mr. Broun have done 

 a great deal for Ceylon and the Sudan, the far 

 greater and longer-continued work in India must 

 now be certainly placed in the forefront of tropical 

 forest experience. 



The book is very well printed, illustrated and 

 bound, though rather too heavy for a forester's 

 wallet ; and it contains a large amount of valuable 

 and most interesting information which should 

 make it a useful guide to foresters, especially in 

 those countries which are chiefly referred to. 



DR. RAMSAY H. TRAQUAIR, F.R.S. 



WE regret to record the death of Dr. R. H. 

 Traquair, F.R.S., of Edinburgh, which 

 occurred early in the morning of November 22 

 after a long period of failing health. Born at 

 Rhynd, Perthshire, on July 30, 1840, Dr. Traquair 

 received his early education in Edinburgh, and at 

 the age of seventeen became a student of medicine 

 in the University of that city. In 1862 he gradu- 

 ated as M.D., and was awarded a gold medal for 

 his thesis on the asymmetry of the flat-fishes, 

 which was published four years later in the Trans- 

 actions of the Linnean Society. He had studied 

 medicine, not with a view to medical practice, but 

 merely because this course seemed most likely to 

 afford him an opportunity of gratifying an early 

 ambition to devote his life to biological science, 

 which had attracted him since childhood. 



.After obtaining his degree. Dr. Traquair accord- 

 ingly remained at the University as prosector to 

 Prof. Goodsir, and from 1863 to 1866 he was 

 demonstrator of anatomy. After serving for a few 

 months as professor of natural history in the Royal' 

 Agricultural College, Cirencester, he removed to 

 Dublin in 1867 as professor of zoology in the newly 

 founded Royal College of Science. Finally, in 

 1873, he was appointed keeper of the natural 

 history collections in the Museum of Science and 

 .Art (now the Royal Scottish Museum) in Edin- 

 burgh, where he remained until his retirement in 

 1906. 



Though interested from the first in all branches 

 of natural history, Dr. Traquair soon began to 

 devote most of his energy to the study of fossil 

 fishes, which became the absorbing pursuit of his 

 long and active life. While still a boy he hafl 

 found part of a Palfeoniscid fish in an ironstone 

 nodule on the beach at Wardie, near Edinburgh, 



NO. 2248, VOL. go] 



and the impossibility of interpreting what he saw, 

 even with the aid of the standard works of the 

 time, led him to begin the long series of researches 

 which have revolutionised our knowledge of 

 Palaeozoic fishes and thrown light on some of the 

 most fundamental problems of ichthyology. 



Beginning in this manner with material which 

 he had himself collected, Dr. Traquair worked out 

 in detail the osteology of several Carboniferous 

 fishes, and with these he compared the imperfectly 

 known fishes from the Scottish Old Red Sandstone. 

 The first important result of these researches 

 was reached in 1877, when he published the pre- 

 liminary part of his "Monograph on the Ganoid 

 Fishes of the British Carboniferous Formations " 

 in the Palseontographical Society's volume for that 

 year. He showed that the Palaeoniscidje and 

 Platysomidffi, which had until then been compared 

 with the existing Lepidosteus, were really primitive 

 Chondrostean fishes closely related to the modern 

 sturgeons. He thus proved that the nature of the 

 scaly covering of fishes was of little importance 

 in classification compared with that assigned to it 

 by Agassiz ; and he was the first to point out the 

 more fundamental characters of the internal skele- 

 ton which have subsequently been recognised as 

 unfailing guides to a natural classification. In 

 short, he made it possible to distinguish between 

 the phenomena of parallelism or convergence, and 

 the marks of natural affinity in the early fishes. 



While studying the Palaoniscidae, Dr. Traquair 

 also devoted much attention to the Crossopterygian 

 and Dipnoan fishes, and published many exact 

 descriptions of their osteology. He showed that 

 the Devonian Dipterus and Phaneropleuron were 

 closely related to the existing Ceratodus, while his 

 interpretations of Crossopterygian skulls now 

 prove increasingly important for comparison with 

 the newly discovered skulls of the early Labyrintho- 

 donts. 



In his later years, Dr. Traquair made another 

 important contribution to our knowledge of fishes 

 by his numerous descriptions of the Upper Silurian 

 Ostracodermi discovered by the Geological Survey 

 in southern Scotland. He demonstrated that the 

 armour-plates of such genera as Pteraspis and 

 Cephalaspis are formed by the fusion of simple 

 granules of shagreen with each other and with hard 

 tissue developed in a deeper layer of the skin. He 

 thus proved the truth of the theory of the origin 

 of the vertebrate exoskeleton, which had already 

 been formulated from the study of comparative 

 morphology. 



Apart from the successive instalments of his 

 palseontographical monograph. Dr. Traquair's last 

 work was his memoir on the ^^'ealden fishes of 

 Bernissart, Belgium, published in 191 1 by the 

 Royal Museum of Natural History, Brussels. This 

 was to him a new subject, and involved much 

 labour for several years, but it was eventually pro- 

 duced with his usual thoroughness, and will long 

 remain a standard work of reference. 



Dr. Traquair was an artist as well as a natural- 

 ist, and he made a large proportion of the beauti- 

 lul drawings which illustrate his published works. 



