Trof. C. Lapioorth — Life and Works of Linnarsson. 171 



VII. — The Life and Work of Linnaksson. 



By Prof. Chas. Lapworth, F.G.S. 



{Concluded from page 122.) 



WE now enter upon the third and concluding term of Linnarsson's 

 geological career. This extended from the commencement 

 of the year 1876 to the date of his untimely death in September, 

 1881. Hitherto, he had been occupied mainly in the development 

 of the grander natural divisions of the Lower Palaeozoic Succession 

 of Sweden. This final period was devoted to the task of elaborating 

 their minor subdivisions and best-characterized zones of life. 



In a paper contributed to the Geological Magazine in June, 

 1876, on the " Vertical Range of the Chief Graptolitic Types in 

 Sweden," Linnarsson unconsciously struck into the new path of 

 original research and discovery he followed thenceforward to the end 

 of his life. On reading the MS. of this paper and examining the 

 illustrative examples forwarded by him to my friend Professor H. 

 xllleyne Nicholson, I was greatly pleased to find that the range of 

 the Swedish forms noticed corresponded precisely with the range 

 of the same species in British rocks as previously worked out by 

 mj^self. This circumstance prompted me to lay before Linnarsson 

 the chief points I had already developed respecting the true order of 

 the Graptolite-bearing strata of Britain, and the vertical range of 

 some of the more characteristic species occurring within them. He 

 was delighted to find that his deductions were in harmony with my 

 own, and in return gave me a detailed account of all that had been 

 accomplished in this department in Sweden up to that date. He 

 followed with the keenest interest every stage of my later work 

 among the Paleeozoie rocks and fossils of Britain, applied the same 

 methods of research to the Graptolite-bearing rocks of Sweden, and 

 long before his death had placed it absolutely beyond question that 

 the grander Graptolitic zones recognizable among the Lower Pala30- 

 zoic rocks of this country have their exact parallels in Sweden, and 

 are characterized either by the same, or by a representative series of 

 these fossils. The study of the subordinate zones and their charac- 

 teristic Graptolithina has been taken up with great earnestness of 

 late years by Linnarsson's pupil and successor. Dr. Sven Tullberg, 

 whose published works upon this subject are a sufficient proof that 

 this task will be completed in a manner worthy of the master 

 himself. 



A memoir upon the Graptolitic shales of Kongslena in Westro- 

 gothia (1877) was Linnarsson's earliest contribution to this special 

 subject. In this paper he made known the existence of a typical 

 Birkhill Graptolite fauna in the lower division of the Upper Grap- 

 tolite Shales of Sweden, and showed, what had already been insisted 

 upon by myself as regards Britain, that this fauna was of more 

 recent date than the Llandeilo, to which it had hitherto been referred, 

 and was in all likelihood of Llandovery age. 



Linnarsson's succeeding memoir, " Upon the Graptolite-bearing 

 Shales of Scania," has been already noticed in detail in the pages of 



