OBITUARY. 
Count Abbe F. Castracane. 
By the death of Count Castracane, Hon. F.R.M.S., a well-known 
figure disappears from the scientific world. Francesco Castracane 
degli Antelminelli, a member of an ancient and noble Italian family, 
with traditions going back for some fifteen centuries — and one of 
whose ancestors was the celebfated warrior-poet Castruccio Castracane, 
tvho fought under our King Edward I. — was born at Fano, on the 
Adriatic coast, in 1817. At the age of twenty-three he took priest’s 
orders, and entered on a life which was divided between the duties of 
his profession and the study of science. Possessed of ample means, he 
was able to gratify his love of learning without detriment to numerous 
beneficent schemes on behalf of the necessitous poor with whom his 
sacred office brought him into intimate contact. 
His first scientific work was in connection with photography, an 
art then in its infancy, and later he turned to micrographic studies, 
particularly in relation to diatomology, and to improvements in the 
Microscope and its appliances. In 1867 he was elected to the 
Pontifical Academy of the Nuovo Lincei, of which he became President 
in 1880, and was made an honorary member of learned societies in 
most of the chief countries of Europe. The eminence Castracane 
attained as a diatomist was proved by his being entrusted with the 
material collected by the ‘ Challenger,’ on which, after considerable 
delay from one cause or another, he reported in a volume of 170 pp. 
and thirty plates, forming Botany, vol. ii., of the ‘ Scientific Results ’ of 
the Expedition. Some 200 new species and several new genera were 
therein described ; but some of these have now been withdrawn or 
revised, with his entire concurrence, as there was nothing of the in- 
fallible professor about Castracane. He died in Rome on March 27th 
last. As his friend De Toni writes : — ‘‘Science loses in Francesco 
Castracane an active member, humanity a noble heart.” 
