Notes

Abstract

DR. R. VON LENDENFELD, professor of zoology and rector of the German University of Prague, who died on July 3, aged fifty-six, had many friends and acquaintances in this country, where he resided for a time. He began his scientific career by travelling in Australia, where he studied chiefly marine sponges and cœlenterates. The results of his investigations were published, partly in English, as “A Monograph of the Australian Sponges,” and other papers in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, and partly in German, as a series of memoirs, entitled “Ueber Cölenteraten der Südsee.” After his Australian trip he was for a time assistant in the zoological department at University College, London, and while in England produced, besides other works, his “Monograph of the Horny Sponges,” published by the Royal Society, based chiefly upon material collected in Australia. Much of his earlier work was somewhat Haeckelian in the method of treatment, and later investigation has failed to confirm the accuracy of many of his statements, notably the existence of a nervous system in sponges alleged by him. Subsequently he published some works on sponges jointly with Prof. F. E. Schulze, of Berlin, and later, after he obtained the chair of zoology at Czernowitz, he published a monograph of the sponges of the Adriatic in a series of memoirs. When called to Prague he continued to publish, from time to time, systematic monographs upon the sponges collected by various expeditions. In addition to his zoological work he was a keen mountaineer, and contributed articles to various Alpine journals.