Makch 18, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



Zll 



Huxley and Martin's epoch-making ' Prac- 

 tical Instruction in Elementary Biology.' 

 To read this book, and a charming biog- 

 raphy of his father which Parker pub- 

 lished in 1893, is to realize the warmth and 

 affection of his nature, the strength of his 

 character, the breadth of his attainments 

 as a philosophic teacher and his command 

 of literary style. In these and all respects 

 Parker's was a charming character. As a 

 companion he was loyal and affectionate, 

 as a worker painstaking and reliable, a 

 friend of youth, utterly destitute of osten- 

 tation and false pride, withal an exemplary 

 man ; and among those who during the 

 period of his association with Huxley and 

 his great work as a teacher came under his 

 charge and benefited by his example may 

 be mentioned F. E. Beddard, Angelo Heil- 

 prin, H. F. Osborn, W. B. Scott and Old- 

 field Thomas, among well-known zoologists 

 and anatomists. 



As an investigator Parker published some 

 forty odd papers and monographs, the best 

 known of which are those dealing with the 

 ' Structure and Development of Apteryx ' 

 and the ' Cranial Osteology, Classification 

 and Phylogeny of the Dinorithidse,' suflS- 

 cient in themselves to have made him 

 famous. On settling down in New Zealand 

 Parker early published a short paper on a 

 new species of Holothurian (Chirodotes 

 Dunediensis) , as it were in anticipation of 

 the later resolve by him and his colleagues, 

 who were during the early 80's appointed to 

 the Australasian professorships of biology, 

 to preferably investigate their indigenous 

 fauna, leaving the refinements of histology 

 and the like for those at home. The results 

 of the combined labors of these men are 

 now monumental. Their work is now sav- 

 ing from oblivion a knowledge of things 

 rapidly passing away, and there will ever 

 remain memorably associated with the de- 

 sire to create a sustained interest in a series 

 of short ' Notes from the Otago University 



Museum,' which Parker during the seven- 

 teen years he was in New Zealand contrib- 

 uted to the pages of Nature, and of ' Studies 

 in Biology for New Zealand Students,' which 

 he instituted and which his pupils and 

 co-workers maintained. Apart from this 

 special interest, as involving the investi- 

 gation of the Australasian fauna, Parker's 

 published works cover a wide field. Verte- 

 brates and Invertebrates alike came under 

 examination, and in his series of papers on 

 the anatomy of the Crayfishes, which cul- 

 minated in a contribution to the ' Macleay 

 Memorial Volume,' published in 1893 con- 

 jointly with his pupil. Miss Josephine Goi-- 

 don Rich, there can be traced interesting 

 continuity of ideas, and once again a primary 

 association with Huxley, in the preparation 

 of whose zoological masterpiece, ' The Cray- 

 fish,' Parker performed an honorable ser- 

 vice. 



The duties of of&ce in New Zealand im- 

 posed upon Parker the Caratorship of the 

 Otago University Museum and the conduct 

 of a botanical class. Before leaving Eng- 

 land he had established a reputation as a 

 pioneer in the application of modern dry 

 methods of micro-chemical technique to the 

 study of vegetable histology, in a noteworthy 

 paper read before the Eoyal Microscopical 

 Society of London during March, 1879, and 

 shortly after the commencement of work at 

 the Antipodes he announced (Trans. New 

 Zealand Institute for 1881) the discovery of 

 sieve-tubes in the marine Algse (Maerocystis) . 

 While for the latter Parker's memory will 

 find a place in the history of botanical dis- 

 covery, in the performance of his curatorial 

 duties he will be remembered as having 

 most successfully overcome the difficulties 

 of preservation of the cartilaginous fish 

 skeleton in a dry state, as may be witnessed 

 in that of a large Carcharodon preserved in 

 a British Museum of Natural History and 

 in others at Otago, Cambridge and else- 

 where. 



