1854.] Linnean Society. 313 



yet a new and untried art in England ; a zealous encourager of im- 

 provements in the microscope ; the possessor of a valuable cabinet of 

 coins, remarkable especially for its illustrations of the various phases 

 of the government of France from the commencement of the Revo- 

 lution in 1789 to the second establishment of the empire under Louis 

 Napoleon in 1851 ; his good taste, his extensive acquirements, and 

 the ready kindness with which both his knowledge and his collec- 

 tions were imparted to others, gained him universal affection and 

 respect. His natural-history collections were extended into various 

 departments, and were as remarkable as his artistic and numismatic 

 for choice and well- selected specimens ; of these the most important 

 were those of zoophytes and of fossil woods, the latter in particular 

 containing many beautiful and instructive illustrations both of struc- 

 tural jjeculiarities and of the process of fossilization. On the last- 

 named subject he published in the ' Transactions of the Geological 

 Society' a valuable paper, entitled "Notice respecting a piece of 

 Recent Wood, partly petrified by carbonate of lime, with some 

 remarks on Fossil Woods," in which his views of the progressive 

 steps in the process of petrifaction are detailed ; while another paper 

 in the same Transactions, " On some Species of Orthocerata," cha- 

 racterized like the former by much novel and minute information, 

 and by a powerful and original turn of thought, laid the foundation 

 for all those curious researches concerning Orthoceratites by which 

 Palaeontology has of late years been so greatly enriched. 



The Linnean Society are indebted to him for the communication 

 of a letter from Mr. M*^ Arthur, " On the Discovery of Milk in the 

 Mammae of the Ornithorhynchus ," a notice of which is inserted in 

 the seventeenth volume of our ' Transactions.' He became a Fellow 

 of the Royal Society in 1821, and of the Linnean Society in 1808 ; 

 and died at his residence in Gray's Inn on the 28th of December 

 last, at the age of 70, lea\'ing a void among the large circle of his 

 friends which can never be supplied. The extent of his knowledge 

 in various departments of natural science would be very imperfectly 

 measured by his published writings ; and his interest in everything 

 relating to them continued, notwithstanding his sufferings from a 

 painful disease, unabated to the last. His varied acquirements, his 

 conversational powers, his thorough benevolence of heart, united as 

 they were with fine taste in matters of art, and clear judgment upon 

 all subjects, formed a combination of talents and accomplishments 

 too rare not to be highly appreciated in the possession and deeply 

 lamented in the loss. 



Charles Baring Wall, Esq., the son of Charles Wall, Esq., by 



