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EDITORIAL GLEANINGS. 



There will be few zoologists indeed to whom the name of Prof. Alleyne 

 Nicholson is unknown, and by whom his text-books have not been used. We 

 greatly regret to see his death recently announced, and to observe the ranks 

 of the older zoologists gradually thinning. Henry Alleyne Nicholson was 

 born at Penrith, Cumberland, in the autumn of 1844, his father being Dr. 

 John Nicholson, who gained considerable distinction as a linguist and 

 philologist, especially in Oriental literature. The son was educated first at 

 Appleby Grammar School, subsequently at Gottingen, and finally at the 

 University of Edinburgh. At the latter University he gained the Baxter 

 Natural Science Scholarship, and when only twenty-five he was appoiuted 

 (in 1869) Lecturer on Natural History in the Extra-Mural School of 

 Medicine in that city, an appointment which he held till 1871, when he 

 became Professor of Natural History and Botany in the University of 

 Toronto. This post he relinquished in 1874, when he moved to Durham 

 in the same capacity. In 1875 he accepted the Natural History Professor- 

 ship at St. Andrews. This post he held till 1882, when he was appointed 

 Regius Professor of Natural History in the University of Aberdeen, and 

 here he remained till the end. We need uot enumerate his special work, 

 as it will follow him. For the facts and dates of the above appointments 

 we have relied on " R. L." in ' Nature.' 



Georg Hermann Carl Ludwig Baur was born in Weisswasser, 

 Bohemia, Jan. 4th, 1859, and died very early and mentally exhausted on 

 June 25th, 1898. As a palaeontologist and zoologist, his life's work was 

 done in America, and in the January number of ' The American Naturalist ' 

 Prof. W. M. Wheeler has given a sympathetic obituary notice of the 

 deceased naturalist, with a list of his scientific publications. These number 

 144, and perhaps one by which he may be best remembered is that in 

 which he expressed the opinion that "the Dinosauria do not exist." He 

 believed that this group is an unnatural one, and is made up of three special 

 groups of archosaurian reptiles which have no close relation to one another. 

 His other most revolutionary enunciation — one since gaining the assent of 

 many well-known workers — is the subsidence theory. " Dr. Baur rejected 

 the hypothesis of the consistency of continents and oceans, and asserted 



