Obituary — P. Lutley Sclater. 383 



He was one of the founders of the British Ornithologists' Union, 

 and was editor of the Jbis for over fifty years. He contributed 

 several bird-catalogues to the British Museum, and was recognized as 

 one of the leaders of systematic zoology. He became a Fellow of 

 the Zoological Society in 1850 and was elected Secretary in 1859, 

 which office he held until 1902 (a period of forty-three years), when he 

 retired on a pension. He was deeply interested in the scientific side 

 of zoology, and largely promoted the publication of the Zoological 

 Record (founded in 1864), which he induced the Zoological Society 

 to aid by an annual grant and to be wholly responsible for from 1866 

 to nearly the present time. 



Dr. Sclater was also keenly interested in promoting the carrying on 

 of the Index Generum et Specierum Animalium, by Mr. Charles 

 Davies Sherborn, F.G.S., F.Z.S., which was commenced by the 

 author in July, 1890, and is still i7i progress — a stupendous undertaking 

 to be carried out by the labour of one man. At the date of the first 

 notice (Proc. Zool. Soc, 1896, p. 610) 130,000 slips had already been 

 stored away in alphabetical order (see Geol. Mag., 1896, pp. 557-61). 

 The first volume of this famous work, which occupied eight years in 

 its production, was issued in 1902 by the Cambridge University Press, 

 and embraced all names from January 1, 1758, to December, 1800, 

 and contains 61,600 entries. The work, under the support of 

 a committee, has been continued, and each year its author has issued 

 a report of progress. The slips are stored in the Natural History 

 Museum, where they are always accessible to all workers in zoology. 



As regards the continuation of this important undertaking, 

 Dr. Sclater had the pleasing satisfaction to know in April of last year 

 (1912) that the Trustees of the British Museum had resolved to take 

 over the work of the compilation of the Index Animalium, and had 

 given Mr. Sherborn rank as a " Special Assistant " on the stafl of the 

 British Museum (Natural History). 



One who knew Philip Lutley Sclater well writes : " The death of 

 Dr. Sclater deprives many of a real friend, and science in general 

 of a warm supporter. A zoologist primarily, he yet found time to 

 take an interest in geology, and was ever ready to learn what geology 

 had to teach in the elucidation of questions of geographical distri- 

 bution and evolution. As Secretary to the Zoological Society he had 

 often led parties of geologists around the Gardens." 



We cannot conclude this brief notice of Dr. Sclater's valuable 

 services to science without a passing reference to his important 

 contribution to the study of the geographical distribution of animals. 



In 1858 ^ he discussed the primary zoological divisions of the earth, 

 taking birds as the basis, and designated six great regions, which he 

 named the Palsearctic, Ethiopian, Indian, Australian, Nearctic, and 

 Neotropical. Although the general tendency at present is to unite 

 several of these regions together, they nevertheless have proved of 

 great service to palseozoologists in dealing with the broad questions 

 of geographical distribution of animals in the past, and it is interesting 

 to find how far Dr. Sclater's studies in zoology had advanced our 



1 Journ. Proc. Linn. Soc. (Zoology), vol. ii, pp. 130-45 (1858). 



