All who have been in any way connected with our excellent contemporary, the 'Annals and Magazine of Natural History,' will probably have been brought in contact with Mr. Alfred Whitehouse, whose recent death we greatly regret. Mr. Whitehouse, at the time of his decease, was fifty-five years of age, and had been with the well-known firm of Taylor and Francis for forty-one years.
Most students of evolution will remember, and probably possess, a small volume entitled 'Darwinism and other Essays,' by John Fiske, M.A., &c., published in 1879. It was with great regret that we read in the 'Times' of July 6th a notice of the death of the author. From that notice we learn that Mr. Fiske died on the 4th inst. of heat apoplexy at Gloucester, Massachusetts. He was born in 1842, and his original name was Edmund Fiske Greene, but he subsequently adopted the name of his great-grandfather, John Fiske.
The Syndics of the Cambridge University Press have undertaken the publication of an important work on the Fauna and Geography of the Maldive and Laccadive Archipelagoes. This work comprises the results of the first scientific expedition that has visited the Maldives and Laccadives. These groups, over 1000 miles long by 70 broad, and comprising about 1500 islands, were surveyed by Capt. Moresby in 1834, at a time when the natives were still unfriendly. Beyond the published charts there is no detailed information respecting them. The expedition, consisting of Mr. J. Stanley Gardiner, Mr. L.A. Borradaile (Selwyn College), and Mr. C. Forster Cooper (Trinity College), passed eleven months in the two groups, during which an attempt was made to survey the area as thoroughly as possible. The chief object of the expedition was to investigate the interdependence of the physical and biological factors in the formation of atolls and reefs. To this end upwards of three hundred dredgings were taken, a large number of soundings were run, and every group of organisms was carefully collected. As a type atoll, Minikoi was chosen on account of its isolation, almost midway between the main reefs of the two groups. The three months, June to September, of the south-west monsoon were spent here. In the Maldives the land and reef fauna of Hulule atollon was collected for comparison with Minikoi. For the rest, eleven out of seventeen atolls were visited, including about two hundred islands, in a cruise of five months' duration, on a schooner and boats lent by the Sultan. Later a steamer was chartered from Ceylon, and four other atolls, including Suvadiva and Addu, were dredged and surveyed. The work will be published in eight parts, of which the first will appear in October, 1901.
