Obituary — Professor Dames. 191 



" On examining the soundings the slope will be found to vary 

 from 6 feet to 19 feet dip in 100 feet horizontal, a dip that cannot 

 possibly injure or strain the cable." 



With regard to the remaining portion of the slope to the south- 

 ward into the Bay of Biscay, it has never been examined with a view 

 of ascertaining the angle. Though in time a great many soundings 

 have been accumulated, as the charts will show, they are the results 

 of many ships, and you will understand that, as a consequence of the 

 uncertainty of finding the precise position of a ship at sea, when the 

 results of two or more ships are compared, there may be considerable 

 errors. But from what we have, the result is the same, i.e. a gentle 

 slope varying from 2° to 10° from the horizontal. 



1 send you some slopes drawn from what information we possess, 

 which include the edge of the deep water from 46° N. lat. to 54° N. lat., 

 and which speak for themselves. You will see that the angles are 

 as I say. I may further mention that I know of no steep submarine 

 precipices in the oceans in any part of the world, except those round 

 coral islands, and perhaps in a few cases round the edges of 

 submerged banks, doubtless of volcanic origin. 



W. J. L. Whakton. 



OBITTJ-A-IR"^. 



WILHELM BARNIM DAMES. 



Born June 9, 1843. Died December 22, 1898. 



By the death of Professor Dames, Germany loses one of its 

 foremost palaeontologists, and the University of Berlin one of its 

 most distinguished Professors. Born at Stolp, in Pomerania, in 1843, 

 he studied at Breslau under Ferdinand Eoemer, and also at Berlin 

 under Beyrich. He graduated at Breslau in 1868, his thesis on 

 the Devonian rocks of Freiburg, Lower Silesia, being published 

 by the German Geological Society in the same year. The troublous 

 times of the Franco- German War then interrupted his researches, 

 and in September, 1870, he was wounded near Chevilly, After 

 recovery he went to Berlin, in 1871, as assistant in the Geological 

 Museum of the University, and became Gustos in 1875. He was 

 appointed Professor Extraordinarius in the University in 1878, and 

 was promoted to an ordinary professorship, on the death of Beyrich, 

 in 1891. He was elected a member of the Prussian Academy 

 of Sciences in 1892. 



During the first decade of his scientific researches Professor 

 Dames was occupied chiefly with fossil Invertebrata, and his most 

 important contribution was his description of the Echinoidea of 

 the Jurassic of N.W. Germany, published by the German Geo- 

 logical Society in 1872. In 1881 he began to take special interest 

 in the Vertebrata, publishing a small note on some Selachian teeth 

 {Rhombodns Bhickhorsti) from the Maastricht Chalk. At this time 

 he was entrusted with a memoir on the famous second specimen 

 of Archceopteryx, which was published, in 1884, in vol. ii of the 

 " Paleeontologische Abhandlungen " — a valuable serial founded by 



