Miscellaneous. 



171 



has been transmitted by Mr Christopher Hoist, Secretary of the Royal 

 University of Norway, Christiania : — The Royal University of Norway 

 has the honour of informing you of the loss which it has just sustained 

 in the person of Mr P. A. Munch. Mr Munch, whom the voice of the 

 people has proclaimed the national historian of Norway, was born at 

 Christiania on the 15th December 1810. His father, Edward Munch, 

 a protestant minister, made him tate bis first classical studies at the 

 school of Skien, and sent him at a later period to study law at the 

 University of Christiania. Young Munch soon drew public attention 

 towards him by a remarkable intelligence, a lively imagination, and 

 a wonderful memory. He abandoned law for historical studies, and 

 was appointed Professor of History at the age of thirty- one, 16th 

 October 18-11. He devoted himself from that time exclusively to the 

 history of his country, whose monuments are found almost as nume- 

 rous out of Norway as within its actual limits. His researches led 

 him successively into Sweden, England, Ireland, and Normandy, where 

 he sojourned at different times. Little by little his name acquired a 

 European celebrity, and he was elected member of several learned foreign 

 societies. In 1857, the Storthing having given him a grant, in order 

 to enable him to make researches at Rome into the ancient history of 

 the Scandinavians, he devoted several years to the fulfilment of this 

 mission in the archives of the Vatican. He gave himself up to these 

 studies, which would have deterred a less persevering energy, with a 

 sagacity which is only equalled by the strange boldness of his conclusions. 

 Centuries did not succeed in hiding from him any of their secrets, and his 

 penetration into the obscurity of past times enabled him to illuminate 

 with glowing hypotheses the chaos of our early history. Is it not 

 hypothesis alone which could open to history the tracks which the critic 

 will clear at a later time ? Mr Munch is the author of a number of his- 

 torical, geographical, philological, and political writings. But his great 

 work, his special title to glory, and at the same time to t'ne eternal grati- 

 tude of his country, is his History of Norway (Det norske Folks Historie), 

 a remarkable scientific and critical work, by which he has made known to 

 the Norwegians their national origin. Unhappily this monument — raised 

 by a choice spirit to the honour of a people who were formerly powerful, 

 and whose annals were associated in the Middle Ages with those of the 

 most of the great European nations — remains uncompleted. Death has 

 stopped this work at the date of the union of Calmar (1397). Mr Munch 

 was suddenly carried off at Rome on the 25th^of March last, in the fifty- 

 second year of his age. He leaves a sorrowing widow, one son, and four 

 daughters. 



PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. 



1. Air-Breathers of the Coal Period; a Descriptive Account of the 

 Remains of Land Animals found in the Coal Formation of Nova Scotia. 

 By J. W. Dawson, LL.D., Principal of M'Gill University — From the 

 Author. 



2. An Inquiry into the Nature of Heat, &c. By Zerah Colburn. 

 London, 1863. — From the Author. 



3. Canadian Naturalist and Geologist, for February, April, June, 

 and August, 1863. — From the Editors. 



