Hv PKOCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY". [May I906, 



of Physical Geography at Berlin, in which position he has done so 

 much to give German geography its scientific spirit, and helped to 

 secure the establishment in Berlin, in 1903, of an institute for the 

 study of Oceanology. His teaching and his insistence on scientific 

 precision in the terminology of descriptive geography have influenced 

 a wider circle than his immediate pupils, thanks to his excellent 

 ' Eiihrer fiir Forschungsreisende ' (1886). He died on October 6th, 

 1905. 



Bichthofen's greatest work is his ' China,' which will long remain 

 a standard work of reference, owing to its great addition to the 

 knowledge of a country previously almost unknown geologically. 

 The work, however, is still unfinished. The first volume, published 

 in 1877, contains an elaborate history of China, and its chief 

 geological interest is the statement of his evidence as to the origin 

 of loess. The second volume deals with the Northern Provinces, 

 and the fourth describes his palaeontological collections. One 

 volume of the Atlas with part of his maps was issued in 1885. But 

 the rest of his maps and the third volume describing Southern 

 China have not yet been published. 



This solid addition to the materials of geology is perhaps of less 

 value than Bichthofen's stimulating influence on contemporary 

 geological thought. His fine imagination led him to brilliant 

 and illuminating ideas in each of the three departments of geology 

 in which he worked — petrology, tectonic geology, and physical 

 geology. 



Petrology was his first love, and that at a time when he de- 

 scribed it as ' still considered a very incomplete and little satisfactory 

 part of geology.' He started work eager to remove this reproach, 

 by giving more precise definitions of rock-names and a more 

 instructive basis of rock-classification. So he compiled a synonymy 

 and diagnosis of melaphyre as a rock-species, on lines similar to 

 those adopted in systematic zoology. The methods by which he 

 hoped to wrest from petrography the whole history of vulcanicity 

 are best stated in his ' Natural System of Volcanic Bocks.' He had 

 shown in 1859 a tendency to the main theory of that paper, in his 

 discussion of the separation of melaphyre and augite-porphyry ; for 

 he then classified the Triassic eruptive rocks of the Tyrol into ten 

 successive eruption-periods. Unfortunately, Bichthofen's reasoning 

 was based on the principles of petrology then dominant in Germany. 

 Thus he resolutely separated the Scottish ' anamesites ' by their 

 younger age from the melaphyre, which he confined to eruptions 



