1853,] Linnean Society. 235 



he could render to others that he did not cheerfully devote his time 

 to make at once prompt and efficient. To those who knew him 

 intimately he was endeared by the singular modesty and purity 

 of his mind. His gentle and unobtrusive life, passed amid his books 

 and plants and the society of a few friends, had induced a degree of 

 fastidiousness, which, often expressed in the quiet humour for which 

 he was distinguished, gave a charm to his society that will not 

 easily be met with again, for the gentleness and innocence of his 

 nature were ever as observable in his sentiments as in his actions. 

 In the year 1850 he occasionally complained of impaired vision, 

 and of feebleness in his limbs, but it was hoped that these symptoms 

 would disappear as they had done some years previously, after his last 

 return from Madeira. But in 1851 he was exposed to great fatigue 

 and anxiety in attending the last illness of his father, whose death 

 was rapidly followed by an alarming aggravation of his own condi- 

 tion. He gradually lost the use of his limbs, and died on the 26th 

 of August 1852, at Bath, from a chronic disease at the base of the 

 brain, in his 47th year. 



Gideon Algernon Mantell, LL.D., F.R.S., F.G.S., F.S.A. SfC, was 

 born in the town of Lewes, where his father carried on a consider- 

 able business as a shoemaker, and received his education first at a 

 dame-school, and afterwards at the establishment of Mr. Button in 

 that town. He was subsequently sent to a school in Wiltshire con- 

 ducted by a clergyman ; on leaving which he was articled to Mr. 

 James Moore, a surgeon and apothecary, resident in his native town, 

 with whom, after obtaining his licence to practise as an apothecary, 

 he entered into partnership. He continued in Lewes until the year 

 1835, when he removed to Brighton, and some years afterwards to 

 Clapham in the neighbourhood of London ; and finally settled in 

 Chester Square, continuing in all these places to practise his pro- 

 fession, and to devote a large portion of his time to geological and 

 antiquarian pursuits. His taste for natural history first displayed 

 itself while he was at the school of Dr. Button, and was more 

 strongly developed after his commencing practice at Lewes ; in the 

 neighbourhood of which he was enabled first to investigate the Chalk 

 and afterwards the Tilgate formations, being greatly encouraged by 

 the late Mr. Davies Gilbert, and largely assisted by the zeal and 

 knowledge of Mr. Stewart Warren Lee. For many years he devoted 

 himself to the prosecution of these researches : his first publication 

 was an article in the ' Sussex Journal ' for 1813, " On the Organic 

 Remains discovered in the environs of Lewes ;" and his earliest 

 contribution to a Scientific Society was a paper read on the 7th 



