Iviii PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [vol. lxxix r 



Theodor Ltebiscii was elected a Foreign Correpondent of our 

 Society in 1899. He was born at Breslau, where he graduated in 

 1874 ; he became Professor of Mineralogy successively at Breslau, 

 GreifsAvald, Konigsberg, and Gottingen. Since 1908 he had been 

 Professor of Mineralogy & Crystallography and Director of the 

 Mineralogical & Petrographical Institute & Museum in the Uni- 

 versity of Berlin. From 1885 to 1921 he was one of the joint 

 Editors of the ' Neues Jahrbuch fur Mineralogie, Geologie und 

 Palaontologie.' His earliest paper (a dissertation in 1874) was. 

 petrographical, dealing with the erratics of northern igneous rocks 

 found in Silesia ; but all his later papers relate to the geometrical, 

 optical, and physical properties of crystals, and to instruments for 

 the determination of these. Apart from his teaching, he was 

 best known through his profound treatises on geometrical and 

 plrysical crystallography. He died on February 9th, 1922. 



[L. J. S.] 



William Carruthers was born at Moffat (Dumfries-shire) on 

 May 29th, 1830 ; he died on June 2nd, 1922. His intention was 

 to become a Minister in the Presbyterian Church ; but, although 

 circumstances led him to follow a scientific career, he never lost 

 his youthful theological enthusiasm. Primarily a botanist, Keeper 

 of the Botanical Department of the British Museum from 1871 to 

 1895, and Botanist to the Boyal Agricultural Society from 1871 

 to 1909, he was for more than fifty years a Fellow of the Geological 

 Society. Fifty-four years ago a grant from the Wollaston Fund 

 was awarded to him, and from 1884 to 1886 he held the office o£_ 

 Vice-President. In 1858 he published a paper on Dumfries-shire 

 Graptolites, and this was followed a few years later by two other 

 geological contributions. The first of a long series of memoirs on 

 the plants of former ages w r as published in 1865. Carruthers was 

 one of a small and distinguished band of naturalists who w r ere 

 largely responsible for the application of scientific methods to the 

 study of extinct plants. Within a short time, especially in the 

 decade 1867-1877, before he became deeply immersed in official 

 duties, he made valuable contributions to our knowledge of 

 different floras and many genera of fossil plants. He described an 

 early Tertiary Osmundaceous fern from Heme Bay, a tree-fern 

 from the Upper Greensand of Shaftesbury, several new Cycads and 

 Conifers from Mesozoic rocks, Permo-Carboniferous plants from 

 Brazil and Queensland, Lepidodendra, Calamites, and other genera 



