EDITORIAL GLEANINGS.
There will be few zoologists indeed to whom the name of Prof. Alleyne Nicholson is unknown, and by whom his text-books have not been used. We greatly regret to see his death recently announced, and to observe the ranks of the older zoologists gradually thinning. Henry Alleyne Nicholson was born at Penrith, Cumberland, in the autumn of 1844, his father being Dr. John Nicholson, who gained considerable distinction as a linguist and philologist, especially in Oriental literature. The son was educated first at Appleby Grammar School, subsequently at Göttingen, and finally at the University of Edinburgh. At the latter University he gained the Baxter Natural Science Scholarship, and when only twenty-five he was appointed (in 1869) Lecturer on Natural History in the Extra-Mural School of Medicine in that city, an appointment which he held till 1871, when he became Professor of Natural History and Botany in the University of Toronto. This post he relinquished in 1874, when he moved to Durham in the same capacity. In 1875 he accepted the Natural History Professorship at St. Andrews. This post he held till 1882, when he was appointed Regius Professor of Natural History in the University of Aberdeen, and here he remained till the end. We need not enumerate his special work, as it will follow him. For the facts and dates of the above appointments we have relied on "R.L." in 'Nature.'
Georg Hermann Carl Ludwig Baur was born in Weisswasser, Bohemia, Jan. 4th, 1859, and died very early and mentally exhausted on June 25th, 1898. As a palæontologist and zoologist, his life's work was done in America, and in the January number of 'The American Naturalist' Prof. W.M. Wheeler has given a sympathetic obituary notice of the deceased naturalist, with a list of his scientific publications. These number 144, and perhaps one by which he may be best remembered is that in which he expressed the opinion that "the Dinosauria do not exist." He believed that this group is an unnatural one, and is made up of three special groups of archosaurian reptiles which have no close relation to one another. His other most revolutionary enunciation—one since gaining the assent of many well-known workers—is the subsidence theory. "Dr. Baur rejected the hypothesis of the consistency of continents and oceans, and asserted
