Appin 5, 1901.] 
with which he was connected for 47 years, 
is greatly indebted to his organizing power, 
and was constantly benefited by the friendly 
relations that he maintained with his col- 
leagues in otherlands. This was the branch 
of his work for which he was peculiarly 
fitted by his patience and accuracy, and 
to which he was most attracted. Among 
the gifts which, from very slender means, 
he contrived to make to the museum may 
be mentioned a valuable collection of fossil 
mammals. 
For a teacher, and particularly a lec- 
turer, Lutken was less qualified. His man- 
ner was reserved and unsympathetic, his 
style too literary. These defects were 
scarcely counterbalanced by the thorough- 
ness with which he prepared his lectures. 
His great text-book, ‘Dyre-riget, ’ published 
in 1855, was stuffed full of facts, laboriously 
collected and verified, but lacked the sim- 
plicity required in an educational work. 
This fault was remedied in the briefer man- 
uals familiar throughout Danish schools as 
“Lutkens, Nos. 2 and 8.’ Indeed, as a 
writer for the public, Lutken could be clear 
enough. In addition to many popular 
sketches of animal life, he, together with C. 
Fogh and Chr. Vaupell, edited the ‘ Tid- 
skrift for populeere Fremstillinger af Natur- 
videnskaben,’ which had a remarkably 
long life for a magazine of that nature, 
namely from 1854 to 1883. This literary 
interest took him away from the open-air 
studies of marine zoology that he had be- 
gun in his student days, while his museum 
duties led him still more to the ‘ dry bones’ 
of his subject. Recognizing his own defi- 
ciencies, he succeeded in obtaining an an- 
nual grant for the founding of a Biological 
Station, where, under the guidance of 
younger men, his students could take a 
biological course. As a member of the 
Fishery Board also he successfully urged 
on the Government the need for a detailed 
study of the natural conditions of Danish 
SCIENCE. 
541 
waters before any legislation could be ef- 
fective. 
As a museum assistant Liitken’s techni- 
cal zoological writings were inevitably con- 
fined to the description and classification of 
the material in his charge. Corals, jelly- 
fish, crustaceans, isopods, annelids, ascid- 
ians, blindworms, all came beneath his 
survey, but his chief work lay among 
echinoderms and fishes. In the former 
group his doctoral thesis ‘On the Echino- 
dermata of Greenland, and the geographi- 
cal and bathymetric distribution of that 
class in northern seas’ (1857) holds a 
foremost place. He wrote also on starfish, 
sea-urchins and West Indian crinoids, but 
his chief systematic work was done on the 
ophiurids. In this department he has of 
late found an able fellow-worker in Dr. Th. 
Mortensen. In ichthyology his earliest 
work of importance was on the classifica- 
tion of the Ganoids, the complete memoir 
appearing in ‘ Paleontographica’ (1873-75). 
While describing and classifying the nu- 
merous fish that came to him from all 
parts, but chiefly from northern seas, he 
was by no means unmindful of wider ques- 
tions, as was proved by his most important 
work ‘Spolia Atlantica,’ of which the first 
part, published in 1880, discussed the 
changes of form in fish during their growth 
and development. The second part, issued 
in 1892, dealt with the distribution of the 
phosphorescent patches in certain deep-sea 
fishes, and is thus alluded to by Goode 
and Bean in ‘ Oceanic Ichthyology’: “ Dr. 
Lutken’s masterly and exhaustive paper 
on the Scopelids of the Zoological Museum 
of the University of Copenhagen * * * 
has rendered it necessary to completely re- 
vise Our opinions upon the relations of the 
species.” 
All Liutken’s work, like that of so many 
of his Scandinavian contemporaries, was 
marked by thoroughness, accuracy and a 
wide knowledge of previous writings. Al- 
