America has lost one of her greatest naturalists. Dr. John
Edwards Holbrook, one of the most eminent zoologists and com- parative anatomiats of the United States, has recently died at Wrentham, in Massachusetts. One who knew him intimately favours us with the following details :—Dr. Holbrook, born at Beaufort in South Carolina iii 1795, educated in New England, and graduated at Brown University, in Rhode Island, subse- quently studied in Philadelphia, Edinburgh, and London. In 1842 he published a large work on the reptiles of the United States, with costly plates (mostly at his own expense), which at that period were only rivalled by Audubon, in another department. In 1824 he was chosen Professor of Anatomy in the University of South Carolina, and in later years he was engaged upon a work on the Ichthyology of the United States, which promised to be one of the greatest scientific achievements of his country. But the recent war broke in upon his labours. His beautiful estate, near Charleston, where so many European savans have been hospitably entertained, was no longer a habitation for culture and the resort of scienc e. Amid the ravages, however, of civil war, his library was spared ; and if his oaks were cut down—those 'live oaks' of great age aud beauty, of which he was so proud and fond—his unpublished plates were saved, and will be valued by the coming student. Dr. Holbrook was extensively known upon this side of the water, and was a member of many foreign academies. In his own home the close companion of Agassiz, the friend of Peirce, of Treadwell, of Bancroft, his name will not be forgotten in Lou- don, where eminent names are always best remembered.
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