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OBITUARY.─ CHAS. DARWIN, F.R.S.─It is with deep regret we have this month to record the death of the author of the "Origin of Species," which event took place at his residence, Down House, Kent, on Wednesday afternoon, 19th April; and we may safely say that we can ill spare such men, and that the whole civilized world thereby experiences a great loss. The name of Charles Darwin will always through future ages, be a landmark, indicating a new departure in science. He must take rank alongside Galileo, Newton, Harvey, and similar pioneers in science, for as each of these names, and some few others, stand as a beacon to point out the time and the path for (as we have before said) a new departure in their respective researches, so Charles Darwin stands with respect to

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biology in its widest sense. The theory of gravitation had been guessed at before Newton, but he showed how it was to be proved, and deduced the law of its action. So, also, the theory of evolution had been guessed at before Darwin, but he first detected the lines along which it must be proved by direct experiment, and thereby revolutionised scientific biology. Even those who still oppose the theory of evolution cannot but confess that it explains many things previously inexplicable. and reduces the chaos of crude ideas about the succession of life on the earth into a system of beauty and symmetry. After years of careful study and hard work in preparing his materials and his weapons, he boldly and alone attacked the fortress of superstition which had been the growth of ages, and with one blow, as it were, shattered it into atoms. Almost alone again, he stood-such men as Huxley, Lyell, and Hooker being his only supports,─and faced the mass of angry vituperation and abuse at first heaped upon his head. Yet he has lived to see the triumph of his ideas, and died regretted and esteemed by every student of science in the world. Twenty-one years after the first appearance of his most memorable book, the naturalists of Yorkshire had the proud honour of presenting to him personally a beautiful memorial of congratulation upon the "attaining of its majority" of the "Origin of Species"; and we know how that memorial touched and gratified the old man's heart. Though dead in the body, his name will live forever in the heart of every true naturalist, and NEWTON and DARWIN─GRAVITATION and EVOLUTION ─must stand side by side in the Temple of Fame. †

† Since the above was in type, we learn that Darwin is to be interred in Westminster Abbey, close to the grave of Sir Isaac Newton! - Eds. Nat.

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MEETING, MAY 16TH. ─ […] Mr. Jagger, as president of the society, was requested to forward to the family of the late Mr. Charles Darwin a letter of condolence, as an expression of their sympathy with them in their great loss.

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YORSHIRE NATURALISTS' UNION. ─BEVERLEY, May 29th, 1882.

[…] It was then resolved unanimously, on the proposition of the chairman, seconded by the Rev. E. Maule Cole, M.A., "That this meeting of member of the Y.N.U. desires to place on record its deep sense of the great loss that natural science has sustained by the death of Charles Darwin."