# Popular Science Monthly/Volume 46/January 1895/Obituary Notes

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Colonel Garrick Mallery, of the United States Army, retired, an esteemed contributor to The Popular Science Monthly, died in Washington, October 24th, aged sixty-three years. He was born at Wilkesbarre, Pa., and was educated at Yale. In 1861 he entered the volunteer service, and for gallantry in action was promoted four times, finally rising to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He was one of the Libby prisoners. He was in charge of the Signal-Service Bureau from 1870 to 1876, and then was ordered to Dakota. His investigations into Indian sign and gesture language, concerning which he published valuable papers in the Smithsonian series and in scientific journals, gave him a high scientific reputation. He was President of the Cosmos Club of Washington.
Dr. Terrien de Lacouperie, at one time Professor of the Comparative Philology of Southeastern Asia at University College, died in Fulham, England, October 11th. To him belongs the credit of having determined the origin of the Chinese writing and early civilization. He was of Norman descent and began life as a merchant, but was drawn away to science and particularly to comparative philology. Having studied the early writing of China, he compared it with the cuneiform characters of Babylonia, and found evidence that some of the characters had been borrowed from the ancient Akkadian. Tracing out other affinities, he found a like correspondence between the civilization of the Chinese and those of Elam and Chaldea. He discovered the key to the puzzling Yihking, or Book of Changes, of the Chinese, determining that it consists of old fragments of early times in China, mostly of a lexical character. He was author of the books: The Early History of Chinese Civilization, The Languages of China before the Chinese, A Catalogue of Chinese Coins from the Seventh Century b. c. to a. d. 621, and The Western Origin of the Early Chinese Civilization, from 2300 b. c. to 200 a. d.
William Topley, F. R. S., an industrious English working geologist, died in Croydon, September 30th, of gastritis contracted during a geological visit to Algeria. He was a special student of the geology of the Weald, on various aspects of which he contributed several papers, and of the bearings of geology on other branches of knowledge. One of his papers treated of the relation of parish boundaries to great physical features. His most important work was The Geological Survey Memoir of the Weald. He was Secretary of the Geological Section of the British Association for fifteen years, was Secretary of the Committee on Coast Erosion, and was President of the Geologists' Association from 1885 to 1887. He took part in most of the international geological congresses, and was for a time a sub-editor, and afterward editor, on the Geological Record.
Prof. N. Pringsheim, an eminent German botanist, died October 6th, in the seventy-second year of his age. He wrote especially on the processes of fructification and germination in the Algæ. He was Professor of Botany at Jena from 1864 to 1868, and founded there the first Institute for Vegetable Physiology. He returned to Berlin in the latter year, and established a private laboratory, in which he carried out valuable investigations on the sexual life of the lowest vegetable organisms.