George Busk

BUSK, GEORGE (1807-1886), British surgeon, zoologist and palaeontologist, son of Robert Busk, merchant of St. Peters burg (Leningrad), was born in that city on Aug. 12 1807. He studied surgery in London, at both St. Thomas's and St. Bartholo mew's hospitals, was appointed assistant-surgeon to the Green wich hospital in 1832, and served as naval surgeon first in the "Grampus," and afterwards for many years in the "Dreadnought." In 1855 he retired and settled in London, where he devoted him self mainly to the study of zoology and palaeontology. As early as 1842 he had assisted in editing the Microscopical Journal; later he edited the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science 68) and the Natural History Review (1861-65). From 1856 to 1859 he was Hunterian professor of comparative anatomy and physiology in the Royal College of Surgeons, and he became presi dent of the college in 1871. He became the leading authority on the Polyzoa ; and later the vertebrate remains from caverns and river-deposits occupied him. He died in London on Aug. Io 1886.

CONR

AD (1826-1886), Dutch literary critic, was born at The Hague. After studying at Geneva and Lausanne, he was appointed pastor of the Walloon chapel in Haarlem in 1851. In 1863 he resigned on grounds of conscience, and in 1868 went out to Java as editor of a newspaper. In 1872 he published the first series of his Literary Fantasies, a title under which he gradually gathered in successive volumes all that was most durable in his work as a critic. His one novel, Lidewijde, was written under strong French influences. Busken-Huet spent his later years in Paris, where he died. For the last quarter of a century he had been the acknowledged dictator in all questions of Dutch literary taste. Perfectly honest, desirous to be sympa thetic, widely read, and devoid of all sectarian obstinacy, Busken Huet introduced into Holland the light and air of Europe. He was a brilliant writer, who would have been admired in any language, but whose appearance in a literature so stiff and dead as that of Holland in the 'fifties was dazzling.