Ohituary —Frof. F. Martin Duncan. 335 



permanence of oceans and continents, a subject upon which his 

 opinion was of especial value. Another of his contributions to 

 chorology was his paper on the fauna of the AliDine Lakes, perhaps 

 the most serious blow ever struck at the theory of the Glacial origin 

 of the Swiss lake-basins. 



But though Professor Duncan did not regard morphology as the 

 highest end, he did not by any means neglect it ; thus our know- 

 ledge of the perignathic girdle of the Echinoids and its value in 

 classification we owe mainly to him ; while his remarkably sug- 

 gestive and original essay on the structure of the ambulacra of the 

 regular Echinoidea, perhaps his most masterly piece of work, has 

 gained the highest praise from men prejudiced against him. 



But in addition to his contributions to palaeontology he has done 

 much in zoology : he wrote a series of papers on the anatomy of the 

 Temnopleuridje, Saleniid*, and other groups of the Echinoidea, and 

 described, amongst others, the Madreporaria of the Porcupine 

 Expedition, the Ophiuroids and Corals of Mergui, and in conjunction 

 with his constant collaborator, Mr. Sladen, the Echinodermata from 

 Greenland. It was probably his close study of the recent forms that 

 made his judgment usually so sound, while the knowledge gained 

 was indispensable for the preparation of his two invaluable works 

 " The Eevision of the Madreporaria " and his " Revision of the 

 Genera and Great Groups of the Echinoidea." The former was issued 

 in 1885, and consisted of diagnoses of every genus of Corals (ex- 

 cluding Rugosa) and of a classification which has not yet been 

 supplanted. His Revision of the Echinoidea was perhaps still finer, 

 and made a great advance in our knowledge of every order. The 

 application of his own discoveries on the ambulacral structure 

 enabled him to bring the Palechinoidea from chaos into order, and 

 to replace the artificial arrangement of the Diadematidse by a natural 

 classification ; his previous detection of the fundamental differences 

 between the pits of Tenmopleurus and the fossettes of Temn echinus 

 gave him the clue to the arrangement of that group ; and his sub- 

 stitution of positive for comparative diagnoses in many recent genera 

 has greatly aided the comparison of the fossil and deep-sea types. 

 But his use of the perignathic girdles in another order was less 

 successful, while his acceptance of Loven's results brought him into 

 conflict with some continental palfeontologists regarding the classifi- 

 cation of the Spatangoidea. By these two Revisions alone Prof. 

 Duncan has earned the gratitude of every paleeontologist and 

 zoologist ; they precisely formulated the best current thought of 

 their time, and have given a firm basis for future work. They 

 must be indispensable works of reference to every student of these 

 groups, till in years to come the progress which they have so 

 largely aided has rendered necessary a new revision, and until some 

 one is then ready and able to undertake the enormous labour such 

 a task involves. 



But in addition to the Corals and Echinodermata, Prof. Duncan 

 made some contributions to the study of the Protozoa and Sponges, 

 while his clearness as a teacher led him to undertake a good deal 



