Abstract
WE called attention in our “Notes” of November 29 (NATURE, vol. lxiii. p. 112) to a rumour that the curator of the museum of the Institute of Jamaica, who for close upon six years has laboured with marked success, is about to relinquish his office in the spring; and the receipt of confirmatory evidence forces upon us a comment upon the situation. The gentleman in question was originally appointed in 1896 for a period of three years, which was renewed in 1899, and during the whole time he has been most assiduous in both the ordinary curatorial and the scientific duties of his office. Under his charge the collections have grown, and by the renewal of old exhibits, and the incorporation of new ones, with a thorough rearrangement of the whole, they have become so materially improved and attractive as to have merited the cordial approval of expert visitors from the home countries and the United States of America. In pure science he has done more; for, while his predecessors were largely content with the mere superficial study of insects, birds and molluscs, he, covering a wider field, has done admirable work in both zoology and anthropology—in the study of the resources of the surrounding sea and of the aboriginal remains on land. He has produced a series of memoirs on the indigenous sea-anemones and coral organisms, which rank high in contemporary zoological literature, and which, as will be evident from the brief résumé of his results, which we published in the afore-mentioned note, have done much to clear up a great deal that is perplexing in the study of these organisms. When it is added that the work has necessitated his journeying afield, and that the climatic conditions render research of the kind on modern lines especially difficult, his threatened removal becomes still more mysterious.
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Zoology in the West Indies . Nature 63, 159 (1900). https://doi.org/10.1038/063159a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/063159a0