Notes

Abstract

WE regret to announce the death of Mr. Robert Damon, of Wey mouth, the well-known naturalist and geologist. He died suddenly on Saturday, the 4th instant, from heart disease. Mr. Damon was the author of an excellent work on the “Geology of Weymouth and the Isle of Portland,” now in its second edition. He was a most extensive traveller and an assiduous collector. He obtained a marvellous series of fossil fishes from the Cretaceous beds of the Lebanon, Syria, now in the British Natural History Museum, also the most complete skeleton of that rare and extinct Sirenian, “Steller's Sea-cow,” from Behring Island. Although in his seventy-fifth year, he contemplated another trip to Siberia to procure an entire Mammoth's skeleton for the National Museum. Only a few years ago he took passage from Nijni Novgorod, down the Volga to Astrakhan, for the purpose of collecting a complete series of the fishes of the Caspian Sea, in which he was most successful. He lately purchased the celebrated zoological collections forming the “Godeffroy Museum” in Hamburg, and he had perhaps the largest collection of recent shells in this country. Mr. Damon's loss will be long felt by a wide circle of scientific friends in all parts of the world, by whom he was warmly esteemed and respected.