[James Cossar]. British zoologist, born at Penicuik, in Midlothian, on the 26th of November 1851; educated at the University of Edinburgh, where he graduated M.D., and where he was appointed demonstrator in anatomy in 1874. The following year he was elected conservator of the museums of University College, London, where he completely reorganized the museums, and carried out investigations upon the bacillus of splenic fever and of other organisms. In 1878 he was appointed by the crown to the chair of natural history in the University of Aberdeen, and in 1882 received the appointment to the same chair in the University of Edinburgh, one of the few prizes open to naturalists in Britain. At Aberdeen he organized the first classes for the practical study of zoology in that university, and also started a small marine laboratory. The latter was the first laboratory of the kind in Great Britain, and it was therein that Professor Ewart and the late Dr. Romanes made their study of the echinoderms, which the Royal Society constituted the Croonian lecture of 1881. At Edinburgh Professor Ewart developed the natural history department of the university, and also created an investigation department in connection with the Fishery Board, in which great progress has been made in tracing the life-history of the herring and other edible fishes. Three marine stations and a staff of qualified assistants are at the director’s disposal in this work. Professor Ewart has instituted two lectureships in the University of Edinburgh, one on embryology and the other on the philosophy of natural history. He did much to obtain for the students a greatly needed union, similar to those existing at the English universities. Later he undertook an experimental investigation into the subjects of hybridity and telegony, at the Bungalow Penicuik. He obtained a Burchell zebra from the Zoölogical Gardens, Antwerp, and a jet-black Island of Rum pony from Lord Arthur Cecil. A foal from this union was born August 12, 1896, which exhibited the characteristic zebra stripes (of a fawn color), on a nearly black background. The result of the experiment, when completed, will aid in settling the vexed points as to the “infection of the ovum” and also the fertility of hybrids.
