406 Linnean Society. [May 24, 



latest corrections. In the ' Magazine of Natural History' for August 

 and September 1838 will be found, under the title of " Remarks on 

 Zoological Classification," an outline of the principles on which he 

 proceeded in forming his tables. In 1817 he became a Fellow of 

 the Royal Society, to which he had the year before contributed a 

 paper "On the Fluents of Irrational Fractions;" and in 1844 he 

 was elected into the Linnean Society. He died at his residence, 

 Thurlby Hall, Newark, in the county of Lincoln, on the 14th of 

 March in the present year, at the age of QQ. 



Richard Cartwright, Esq.. formerly of Bloomsbury Square, and 

 for many years one of the Surgeons of the Middlesex Hospital, died 

 at Winwick, in Lancashire, on the 22nd of June 1854, at the age 

 of 86. He was elected into the Linnean Society in 1799, and had 

 consequently been a Fellow for the long period of fifty-five years. 



Sir Henri/ Thomas Be la Beche, Knt., C.B., F.R.S., F.G.S., 

 Correspondent of the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of France, 

 Director-General of the Geological Survey of the United Kingdom, 

 Director of the Museum of Practical Geology and of the Government 

 School of Mines, and a Member of the Health of Towns' Commission, 

 was born in London in the year 1796. His father was Thomas 

 De la Beche, Esq., of Halse Hall, Clarendon, Jamaica, a colonel in 

 the army ; and he claimed descent from the Barons De la Beche, of 

 Aldworth, Berks, in the time of Edward the Third. He received 

 his early education at the school of Ottery St. Mary, and in 1810 

 was admitted into the Royal Military College of Great Marlow, sub- 

 sequently removed to Sandhurst. He served for a short time in the 

 army, but soon retired ; and settling with his family in Dorsetshire, 

 a district rich in geological indications and in fossil remains, he im- 

 bibed that taste for geology which directed the current of his after 

 life. Into the study of that science he entered at once with uncommon 

 ardour. At the age of twenty-one he became a Fellow of the Geological 

 Society ; and his investigations were for the next few years divided 

 between the Continent and the counties of Dorset, Devon and Pem- 

 broke. In 1 81 8 he married Letitia, daughter of Captain Charles White, 

 of Loughbrickland, Co. Down, who died in 1844, leaving one 

 daughter. One of his earliest papers, " On the Temperature and 

 Depth of the Lake of Geneva," appeared in the ' Edinbui-gh Philo- 

 sophical Journal' for 1820, and was reprinted at Geneva in 1827. 

 This, and other papers, soon after published, such as a " Catalogue 

 of Birds, and of Terrestrial and Fluviatile Mollusca found in the 

 vicinity of Geneva," and " Notes on the Habits of a Caryophyllia 

 from Torbay," both in the ' Zoological Journal,' show that he did 



