192 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



The only birds to which attention need be particularly drawn are a 

 pair of Indian Concave-crowned Hornbills. As was pointed out to me 

 by Mr. Bertling, the head-keeper, the cock and hen differ from each 

 other in one curious particular, namely, the colour of the iris of the 

 eye, which in the hen is greyish yellow, and in the cock deep red. 



R. I. P. 



OBITUARY. 



Alpheus Spring Packard. 



We greatly regret to record the death of this accomplished 

 naturalist, and we reproduce an excellent biographical notice from 

 ' The American Journal of Science ' for March : — 



"Alpheus Spring Packard, Professor of Zoology and Geology in 

 Brown University, died at his home in Providence, R. L, Feb. 14th, 

 1905, at the age of nearly sixty-six years. 



" Prof. Packard was a son of the late Prof. Alpheus Spring Packard, 

 of Bowdoin College, and was born at Brunswick, Me., Feb. 19th, 1839. 

 He was graduated from Bowdoin in 1861. and from the Maine Medical 

 School and the Lawrence Scientific School in 1864. At Cambridge 

 he was one of that remarkable group of students — Hyatt, Morse, 

 Packard, Putnam, Scudder, Shaler, and Verrill — associated with the 

 elder Agassiz in the early sixties. He served for a time, in 1864-5, 

 as Assistant-Surgeon in the U.S. Army, but never became a regular 

 practitioner of medicine, his life being devoted to his chosen work in 

 zoology and geology. An enthusiastic field naturalist, collector, and 

 explorer, as well as a very voluminous author who wrote on a remark- 

 ably wide range of subjects, he was specially distinguished as an 

 entomologist. He is most widely known, and will probably be longest 

 remembered, for his original work on insects, and his several text- 

 books on entomology and zoology. Early in his career he accepted the 

 theory of evolution, and later became an ardent neo-Lamarckian. One 

 of his last works was ' Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution ; his Life 

 and Work.' He was one of the founders of the ' American Naturalist,' 

 for twenty years its chief editor, and a constant contributor to its 

 pages. Prof. Packard was a member of the National Academy of 

 Sciences, and of many European societies. Before his appointment at 

 Brown, in 1878, he was successively Librarian and Custodian of the 

 Boston Society of Natural History, Director of the Peabody Academy 

 of Science, State Entomologist of Mass., and a member of the U.S. 

 Entomological Commission. — S. I. S." 



