Miscellaneous. 



355 



PHOTOGRAPHY. 



A valuable application has been made by Captain Ibbetson of a 

 Photogenic process for rapidly producing perfect drawings of fossil 

 shells on metallic plates, from which, when fixt by the engraver's 

 tool, lithographic transfers may be rapidly multiplied to an almost 

 indefinite extent. This process promises to be applicable to organic 

 remains of every kind, and consequently of great utility in Paleon- 

 tology. From a beautiful fossil starfish I sent by one day's mail to 

 Captain Ibbetson, in London, I received, by the next mail, a parcel 

 of most exact impressions, taken from a photographic drawing, trans- 

 ferred to stone by the process above mentioned. — Dr. Buckland's 

 Anniversary Address to the Geological Society, 1841. 



BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF BLUMENBACH. 



The death of Blumenbach was briefly recorded in our sixth volume, 

 p. 234. The account of this distinguished man is from Dr. Buck- 

 land's Anniversary Address to the Geological Society. 



Professor Blumenbach died at Gottingen on the 22nd of Ja- 

 nuary 1840, in the 89th year of his age : he was born at Gotha, May 

 11, 1752, and early imbued with a taste for natural history and me- 

 dicine by his father, a native of Leipsic, who died in 1787, in the 

 office of Pro-rector and Professor in the Gymnasium at Gotha. At 

 the age of 17, a.d. 1769, he began his academical career at Jena 

 by the study of literature under Baldinger, and of natural history 

 and archaeology under his relative Professor Walch, and three years 

 after proceeded to Gottingen to complete his studies, where he im- 

 mediately became intimate with Heyne, Professor Biittner, and Mi- 

 chaelis, whose son was then a fellow-student in medicine. The rich 

 collection of voyages and travels to which he had access in the li- 

 brary of Professor Walch, suggested to him, as the subject of his 

 exercise for his Degree of Doctor, a dissertation on the native va- 

 rieties of the human race, which became the first germ of his future 

 extensive researches in Anthropology, in which he derives the three 

 great varieties of the human family from a primary stem of the 

 Caucasian race. His first public employment was a gratuitous 

 undertaking to arrange the cabinet of natural history which the 

 University had purchased from Professor Biittner, which soon 

 brought him favourably to the notice of the minister and curator 

 of the University. In 1775 he was appointed a Private Teacher 

 in Natural History ; in the following year an Extraordinary Pro- 

 fessor, and in 1778 an Ordinary Professor of Medicine and Natural 

 History in the University of Gottingen. 



In 1784 he became a Member of the Royal Society of Gottin- 

 gen; in 1788, a Counsellor; and in 1812, perpetual Secretary of the 

 Class of Physics and Mathematics in the same Society. In 1816 

 he was appointed a Member of the Superior Council of Medicine, 

 and in 1821, a Commander of the Guelphic Order. His talent as 

 a lecturer, and profound knowledge of medicine, anatomy and na- 

 tural history, soon made Gottingen a centre of attraction to the 



