44 Sketch of the Life of the late Professor Edward Foi'bes. 



" I commend your intention of writing a text-book. What we want 

 is a clear statement of the present state of vegetable physiology and 

 anatomy, and a concise and contrasting view of the orders in a 

 portable class volume. I speak now from having felt the want of 

 such." 



In the position of Geological Curator^ " his extensive know- 

 ledge of recent vegetable and animal species, and his remarkable 

 acquaintance with the laws of their distribution (particularly as 

 regards invertebrate animals), became available for general palse- 

 ontological research. Here, too, he was enabled to apply to 

 geological research that peculiar knowledge of the conditions of 

 existence of species, which his continual operations with the 

 dredge had led him to. We owe to him the methodical use of 

 the dredge as an instrument of research in natural history ; to 

 use his own words, ' the dredge is an instrument as valuable to 

 a naturalist as a thermometer to a natural philosopher.^ At his 

 instance, the British Association has appointed for many years 

 a dredging committee, charged with the duty of completing our 

 knowledge of marine animals, with a view to geological in- 

 quiry/^ 



In 1845 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was 

 afterwards a Member of Council. He was appointed Palaeon- 

 tologist to the Geological Survey of Great Britain, under Sir 

 Henry De la Beche, and subsequently became Professor of 

 Zoology and Palaeontology in the Government School of Mines. 

 He gave lectures in King^s College, in the Koyal Institution, in 

 the School of Mines, and at Marlborough House; and he 

 arranged the fossils of the splendid Geological Museum in 

 Jermyn Street. He continued to prosecute his practical geo- 

 logical work in various parts of the kingdom, and published 

 from time to time the results of his researches. 



About the year 1846_, he was attacked with a severe illness 

 of a nephritic nature, during which his life appeared to be in 

 great jeopardy. Although he recovered irom the attack, yet 

 the effects of it were frequently felt by him afterwards ; and it 

 seems to have laid the foundation of his fatal illness. He often 

 remarked, that he appeared to possess great vitality, from having 

 struggled through two such serious attacks ; and, in his last 

 illness, his hopes were for a time kept up by the idea he enter- 

 tained of his vital powers. 



Towards the end of the year 1846, he published, with Lieut. 

 Spratt, his 'Travels in Lycia,' a classical work, containing in- 

 teresting episodes in natural history, with a ' Sketch of the 

 Botany of Asia Minor and the iEgean.' About the same time 

 appeared his Monograph of the Southern Indian Fossils, in the 



