Vol. 60.] ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. Mi 



The mere list of ZitteFs published papers shows his unwearied 

 energy and the wide range of his acquirements. This brief notice 

 cannot be more than a necessarily-imperfect and inadequate account 

 of his scientific achievements. Looking at them as a whole, we are 

 struck with their breadth of view, their originality of treatment, 

 and the complete command which they evince of the whole litera- 

 ture of every subject with which they deal. 



His training having been so wide and so thorough, he was able 

 throughout his career to take up the consideration of each branch 

 of the geological sciences with full knowledge of its relations to 

 all the other branches. His mental grasp, his scientific insight, 

 and his faculty of luminous arrangement and clear exposition, are 

 strikingly displayed in his great work, the ' Handbuch der Palaeon- 

 tologies The first part of this treatise appeared in 1876, and the 

 last of its five massive volumes was issued in 1893. He thus spent 

 upon it some seventeen of the best years of his life. It was no 

 mere compilation. Almost incredible as the task may appear which 

 he undertook, he entered in turn upon the detailed study of each 

 great zoological group, and made himself so thoroughly master of it 

 and of its connected literature, that he could write upon it with the 

 ripe knowledge and full authority of an expert, competent to revise 

 the work of his predecessors. He was thus in a position to present 

 an ordered classification of the fossil groups, and to show their 

 affinities more clearly than had been done before. Hence his 

 volumes at once took their place as the great work of reference 

 for modern palaeontologists, who came to look up to him as their 

 inspiring teacher, and to Munich as the Mecca towards which their 

 pilgrim-steps should be directed. 



The department of palaeontology to which Zittel gave perhaps 

 most exhaustive attention was that of the Fossil Sponges, his 

 treatise on Avhich probably embodies his most important original 

 research. The group of Sponges had not been properly understood 

 or arranged when he entered upon its study, but he worked out the 

 true principle of classification of these organisms, applicable equally 

 to the extinct and to the living forms. 



He took much interest in the region of the Libyan Desert. The 

 geological introduction to the first volume of that important work, 

 1 Beitrage zur Geologie und Palaeontologie der Libyschen Wiiste ' 

 (1883), was written by him. In ]896 he renewed his interest in 

 African geology by accompanying the excursion of the Geological 

 Society of France to Algeria, which he greatly enjoyed. 



vol. lx. e 



