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OBITUARY. CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN. The celebrated naturalist and scientist, Charles Darwin, died at his residence, Down House, Kent, England, on the 20th day of April, 1882. He was born at Shrewsbery, England, February 12, 1809, and was consequently past seventy-three years of age at the time of his death.

His love for scientific research won for him the distinction of being the foremost biologist of modern times; and no scientific writer has been more honored and quoted by the scholars of the age, or more misrepresented and misunderstood by the bigoted and ignorant theologians and their followers. Mr. Darwin graduated from Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1831, and in the same year he accompanied the ship Beagle, in her scientific circumnavigation of the globe, as the naturalist of the expedition. On his return to England he published a journal of the voyage. He afterward prosecuted his scientific investigations in England. He published "The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs," 1842; "Geological Observations on Volcanic Islands," 1844; "Geological Observations in South America," 1846: and in 1851-1853, a "Monograph of the Family Cirrhipedia;" and "Fossil Species" in 1859. His "Origin of Species, by Means of Natural Selection," published in 1859, was translated into many European languages, and gave rise to much controversy. In 1862 he published a work on the "Fertilization of Orchids," and in 1868 on the "Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication." In 1871 he gave to

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the world his treatise on the "Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex." He has since published many separate papers, notably on "The Geology of the Falkland Islands;" "The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms;" "On the Expression of the Emotions in Men and Animals," and on "Volcanic Phenomena," and "The Distribution of Erratic Boulders," both the latter relating to South America. He received the Copley and the Royal medals from the Royal Society, and the Wollaston Palladian medal from the Geological Society. He was elected a member of various English and foreign bodies, was made a Knight of the Order "Pour la Merite," by the Prussian Government, a corresponding member of the Academy of Vienna, 1871, and had conferred upon him the degree M. D., by the University of Leyden, in 1875, and the degree of LL. D., by the University of Cambridge in 1877. In the following year he was elected a corresponding member of the French Academy of Sciences.