Miscellaneous Intelligence. 523 



OBITUARY. 



Joseph Leidy. — Dr. Joseph Leidy, the eminent Comparative 

 Anatomist, Zoologist and Paleontologist, died at Philadelphia on 

 the 30th of April. He was born in the same city on the 9th of 

 September, 1823. His father was a native of Montgomery 

 County, Pa., but his ancestors on both sides were Germans from 

 the valley of the Rhine. While yet a school-boy, minerals and 

 plants were eagerly collected and studied, and also anatomical 

 dissections were begun, a barnyard fowl being the first subject. 

 He entered the Medical School of the University of Pennsyl- 

 vania in 1840 and devoted his first year to practical anatomy. 

 Having taken his medical degree in 1844, he became the next 

 year, then 21 years of age, Prosector to Dr. Horner, Professor of 

 Anatomy in the university ; and at the death of Dr. Horner, in 

 1853, he was appointed his successor. 



In 1844 he made the many remarkable dissections of terres- 

 trial mollusks, the drawings of which cover sixteen plates and 

 illustrate thirty-eight species in Dr. Binney's fine work on the 

 Terrestrial Mollusks of the United States — showing in all not 

 only remarkable power as an anatomist entitling him to high 

 rank, as Dr. Binney remarks, among philosophical zoologists, but 

 also great skill as a draftsman. Thus, from the first, Dr. Leidy 

 was the thorough, minutely accurate and untiring investigator. 



After the publication of Dr. Binney's work in 1845, he was 

 elected a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Phila- 

 delphia ; and from that time he was its most active member, 

 hardly a volume of its publications appearing without one or 

 more papers on the results of his researches. 



Dr. Leidy's contributions to Zoology and Comparative Anat- 

 omy have a wide range. The Lower Invertebrates occupied a 

 large share of his time. Besides multitudes of short papers, he 

 published in 1853, a work of 67 pages, illustrated by ten plates, 

 on " A Flora and Fauna within Living Animals " — of the botan- 

 ical part of which Dr. Gray said in this Journal— "a contribu- 

 tion of the highest order, the plates unsurpassed if not un- 

 equalled by anything before published in the country." In 1879 

 appeared his large quarto volume on the fresh-water Rhizopods 

 of Xorth America, containing 48 colored plates, the material of 

 which was in part collected during two seasons in the Rocky 

 Mountain region under the auspices of the Hayden Exploring 

 Expedition. As a portraiture of the Doctor over the little mem- 

 berless species, we quote from his concluding remarks: "The 

 objects of my work have appeared to me so beautiful, as repre- 

 sented in the illustrations, and so interesting as indicated in their 

 history which forms the accompanying text, that I am led to 

 hope the work may be an incentive, especially to my young 

 countrymen to enter into similar pursuits. ' Going fishing ?' 

 How often the question has been asked by acquaintances as they 

 have met me, with rod and basket, on an excursion after mate- 



