422 Miscellaneous Intelligence. 



obituary. 



Miss Annie E. Law was born in Carlisle, England. She was 

 the eldest of three children of John Law, whose brother was 

 governor of the Island of Malta. Her father with his family 

 emigrated to Tennessee about the year 1851, settling near Marys- 

 ville, where her parents and brother are buried. She remained 

 at various points in eastern Tennessee until about 1874, when she 

 moved to Hollister, California, and thence to Watsonville, where 

 she remained with her sister, Mrs. Andrews, in impaired health, 

 until Jan. 12th, 1889, when she passed away, endeared to all 

 with whom she came in contact. Her rare intellect, combined 

 with her wonderful musical talent, made her the center of a large 

 and cultivated society, while as a writer she occupied a high 

 position, her poems being remarkable for their pathos and sweet- 

 ness. While Miss Law will be long and widely missed by those 

 acquainted with her socially, there is a much larger circle who 

 will ever honor her name as that of one of the most devoted 

 conchologists we have ever known. She described no species 

 and wrote no articles on the subject, but she contributed none 

 the less to the advancement of science by collecting material for 

 the publications of others. She was a most generous correspond- 

 ent, distributing lavishly the many novelties she collected in the 

 mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina. She first drew 

 attention to the richness of those localities which have since 

 proved almost a new fauna in land mollusks, collecting eleven 

 species and one genus new to science. As an instance of her 

 enthusiasm, the writer may mention that when he urgently begged 

 her to obtain for him the living animal which had formed the 

 shell of the so-called Vttrina latissima in order to verify its 

 generic position, she undertook a perilous wagon journey of 

 several weeks over mountain roads, camping out at nights ; she 

 reached Black Bald Mountain, and found numerous specimens, 

 which enabled the writer from its external and anatomical char- 

 acters to describe the remarkable genus. w. G. b. 



Dr. Heinrich von Dechen, the eminent geologist of Germany, 

 died at Bonn on February 15, having nearly reached his 90th 

 birthday. 



Professor Giuseppe Meneghini, of the University of Pisa, and 

 Senator of the kingdom, the author of works and memoirs on 

 zoology and geology, died on the 29th of January, 1889, at the 

 age of 78. 



Theodor Kjerulf, one of the best and most active of Nor- 

 wegian geologists, died on the 26th of October, 1888. 



John Ericsson, physicist and mechanician, and one of the 

 most remarkable men of the century, died in New York, on the 

 8th of March. He was boru in Wermland, Sweden, on the 31st 

 of July, 1803. 



