liv PKOCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [May 1 896, 



and the later generation of workers in this branch of palae- 

 ontology may well look upon him as a worthy pupil of Adolphe 

 Brongniart, whose philosophic spirit and scientific handling of facts 

 are reflected in the writings of his younger countryman. The 

 writer of a recent obituary notice in a French scientific journal 

 has thus happily expressed Saporta's unfailing industry : ' A des 

 travaux considerables succedaient des entreprises plus considerables 

 encore, et Ton oubliait l'age en voyant l'oeuvre s'augmenter et les 

 horizons s'etendre toujours.' — [A. C. S,] 



John Whitaker Httlke, F.R.S., President of the Eoyal College 

 of Surgeons of England ; Foreign Secretary of the Geological Society 

 of London. 



Only four days after the Anniversary Meeting last year, in the 

 plenitude of his honours, and in the faithful discharge of his duties 

 for the alleviation of suffering humanity, our late Foreign Secretary 

 gave up his life. As senior surgeon he was summoned to Mid- 

 dlesex Hospital to perform an operation on February 7th, one of 

 the most terribly severe nights of that exceptionally trying month ; 

 he returned home, fatigued and suffering from bronchitis, at 

 3.30 a.m., but attended and operated at the hospital on the 9th ; 

 visited his patients again on the 10th and 11th, when serious 

 illness prostrated him, and he succumbed on the 19th February 

 to pneumonia. 



John Whitaker Hulke was born on November 6th, 1830, being 

 the elder son of a well-known and widely respected general practi- 

 tioner at Deal. The original family name was Hulcher, his ancestors 

 being Dutch by origin, who had escaped from Holland during the 

 Spanish persecutions under Philip II. and Ferdinand, Duke of Alva, 

 and settled on the Kentish coast. There for some two hundred 

 years they have followed the vocation of medicine. He was 

 educated at King's College School, and at Neuwied, in Germany, 

 and at the age of nineteen entered the medical school of King's 

 College, where he was a dresser to Mr. (afterwards Sir) William 

 Bowman, and house-surgeon to Sir William Fergusson. It was 

 while he occupied this position that he attended the Duke of 

 Wellington in his last illness, his father being the Duke's regular 

 medical attendant and obtaining leave to avail himself of his son's 

 services as assistant. In 1854, when the Crimean War broke out, 

 he was early to volunteer, and at the beginning of 1855 was 

 appointed assistant surgeon to the British Civil Hospital at Smyrna. 

 Thence he was sent to Sebastopol, and in that awful campaign of 



