﻿Ivi 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [vol. lxxii, 



parts ; and in 1S91 by a Catalogue of the Fossil Birds, in one part. 

 The whole series of ten small volumes did useful service to Verte- 

 brate Pakeontology at the time, and included the first systematic 

 attempt to correlate European with American vertebrate fossils. 

 In 1893 and again in 1894, Lydekker visited the Argentine 

 Republic at the invitation of Dr. Francisco P. Moreno, Director of 

 the La Plata Museum. Here he studied the remarkable collection 

 of mammalian remains from the Tertiary and post-Tertiary forma- 

 tions of the Republic, besides a few dinosaurian bones from a 

 Cretaceous deposit in Chubut. Some beautifully - illustrated 

 memoirs in the ' Anales ' of the La Plata Museum were the result. 

 By this time Lydekker had begun to realize the important bearing 

 of recent discoveries of fossil mammals on the problems of geo- 

 graphical distribution ; and in 1896 he published the most original 

 and most philosophical of his works, ' The Geographical History of 

 Mammals.' During all these researches he contributed numerous 

 preliminary notes to various serials, including the Quarterly 

 Journal of the Geological Society. 



In 1889 Lydekker wrote the volume on vertebrates for the third 

 edition of Prof. H. A. Nicholson's ' Manual of Palaeontology,' and 

 in 1891 he joined Prof, (afterwards Sir) William H. Flower in the 

 authorship of a valuable ' Introduction to the Study of Mammals.' 

 From 1893 to 1896 he edited the 'Royal Natural History,' to 

 which he himself contributed the sections on vertebrates. From 

 1896 until his death, much of his time was spent in arranging the 

 public exhibition of Recent Mammals in the British Museum 

 (Natural History), for which he was specially employed by the 

 Trustees. His later studies therefore became more purely zoological, 

 and he published several more or less popular volumes adapted to the 

 needs of sportsmen. He also wrote a ' Catalogue of the Ungulate 

 Mammals ' and some Guide-books for the British Museum. His 

 industry was phenomenal, but he sometimes bewailed his facility 

 for literary composition which betrayed him into errors that on 

 further reflection became at once apparent to him. In his ancestral 

 home at Harpenden, though oppressed by sad domestic trouble, he 

 continued absorbed in his favourite pursuits until the end, and his 

 last volume for the British Museum was published posthumously. 

 He had a large circle of devoted friends, whose admiration for his 

 character increased the more closely they became associated with 

 him. An excellent portrait of him appears as frontispiece to the 

 fourth volume of the f Catalogue of the Ungulate Mammals in 

 the British Museum.' 



