EDITORIAL GLEANINGS. 279 



All who have been in any way connected with our excellent con- 

 temporary, the • Annals and Magazine of Natural History,' will probably 

 have been brought in contact with Mr. Alfred Whitehouse, whose recent 

 death we greatly regret. Mr. Whitehouse, at the time of his decease, was 

 fifty-five years of age, and had been with the well-known firm of Taylor and 

 Francis for forty-one years. 



Most students of evolution will remember, and probably possess, a 

 small volume entitled ' Darwinism and other Essays,' by John Fiske, M.A., 

 &c., published in 1879. It was with great regret that we read in the 

 * Times ' of July 6th a notice of the death of the author. From that notice 

 we learn that Mr. Fiske died on the 4th inst. of heat apoplexy at 

 Gloucester, Massachusetts. He was born in 1842, and his original name 

 was Edmund Fiske Greene, but he subsequently adopted the natne of his 

 great-grandfather, John Fiske. 



The Syndics of the Cambridge University Press have undertaken the 

 publication of an important work on the Fauna and Geography of the 

 Maldive and Laccadive Archipelagoes. This work comprises the results 

 of the first scientific expedition that has visited the Maldives and Lacca- 

 dives. These groups, over 1000 miles long by 70 broad, and comprising 

 about 1500 islands, were surveyed by Capt. Moresby in 1834, at a time 

 when the natives were still unfriendly. Beyond the published charts there 

 is no detailed information respecting them. The expedition, consisting of 

 Mr. J. Stanley Gardiner, Mr. L. A. Borradaile (Selwyn College), and Mr. 

 C. Forster Cooper (Trinity College), passed eleven months in the two 

 groups, during which an attempt was made to survey the area as thoroughly 

 as possible. The chief object of the expedition was to investigate the 

 interdependence of the physical and biological factors in the formation of 

 atolls and reefs. To this end upwards of three hundred dredgings were 

 taken, a large number of soundings were run, and every group of organisms 

 was carefully collected. As a type atoll, Minikoi was chosen on account of 



sisolation, almost midway between the main reefs of the two groups. The 

 three months, June to September, of the south-west monsoon were spent 

 here. In the Maldives the land and reef fauna of Hulule atollon was 

 collected for comparison with Minikoi. For the rest, eleven out of seven- 

 teen atolls were visited, including about two hundred islands, in a cruise of 

 five months' duration, on a schooner and boats lent by the Sultan. Later 

 a steamer was chartered from Ceylon, and four other atolls, including Suva- 

 diva and Addu, were dredged and surveyed. The work will be published 

 in eight parts, of which the first will appear in October, 1901. 



