Lxiv Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 
obtained by mounting the objects on glass with Canada balsam. Actinize 
and other organisms were killed with menthol, the addition of a little of 
which to sea-water was found to cause the animals to expand very fully. 
In this distended condition they were preserved in formalin. It was further 
ascertained that excellent preparations of various marine animals could be 
made by placing them in strong glycerine, the index of refraction of which is 
so nearly that of the soft tissues of these organisms, that it makes them more 
or less transparent ; they then look bright and life-like, and much of their 
internal structure is distinctly visible. 
It has to some of Sorby’s friends been matter of regret that he did not 
himself follow up the consequences of his own discoveries, but left this to be 
done by others, while he himself passed on into fresh fields of observation 
and experiment. But when his peculhar gifts are considered, it may be felt 
that he not improbably employed them better in the course which he 
adopted. He seemed to flit from subject to subject, but there was generally 
a well-connected mental chain in these transitions. When new ideas were 
suggested by the progress of one of his enquiries, he was apt to branch off into 
collateral investigations, which might soon become in his eyes more fascinating 
and important than that out of which they arose. He used to say of himself 
that his difficulty was to avoid discovering new things, but that for him, at 
least, it was “ possibly better to invent new things than to work up old ones 
thoroughly.” It must be admitted that there were few subjects to which he 
for a time devoted serious attention, which he did not enlarge and illumine. 
This habit of divergence necessarily led to the accumulation of a vast 
mass of notes of the results of observations and experiments. In 1898, 
when receiving the presentation of his portrait, he said of himself: “The 
majority of my friends can have little idea of the amount of material I have 
collected in connection with a variety of subjects. The great difficulty I 
now have is to find time to work that material into shape and to publish it. 
I hope to be able to do so, but I am beginning to think it is a doubtful 
question.” | 
How Sorby could be, as it were, enticed into one enquiry after another, 
until he had travelled far away from his starting-point, is well illustrated by 
his own account of what followed his prolonged investigation of the Thames. 
While engaged in studying the estuary of that river, he was naturally 
interested in the remarkable topographical changes which the surroundings 
of the Isle of Thanet have undergone within historic times. The evidence 
of these transformations, partly geological and partly antiquarian, suggested 
to him various enquiries, in the course of which he found it necessary to 
examine Roman, Saxon, and Norman buildings, to study their respective 
building materials and to carry out a great many experiments. In seeking 
further light on the subject from illuminated manuscripts he was struck by 
the variations in the unit of length employed by the scribes, and he drew 
some inferences therefrom as to the several countries where the MSS. had 
been written. Once embarked on the study of manuscripts he could not 
