1855.] Linnean Society. 411 



Ashworth, and in 1853 he was elected President of the Geological 

 Society. But although his residence in London might have been 

 considered as most advantageous in reference both to his position 

 and his pursuits, his aspirations were constantly directed to the 

 Chair of Natural Historj' in the University of Edinburgh, and a 

 vacancy occurring by the death of Prof. Jameson, he unhesitatingly 

 abandoned the metropolis, with all its allurements, official and other- 

 wise, and felt that he had arrived at the summit of his wishes when 

 he was eagerly welcomed as the successor to the vacant Chair. He 

 had formed magnificent schemes for the future, with reference both 

 to lectures and museum, and his inaugural discourse, delivered on 

 the 15th of May 1854, filled to overflowing the largest class-room 

 of the University, with an auditory almost as enthusiastic as himself. 

 At the subsequent meeting of the British Association in Liverpool, 

 he was elected President of the Geological Section, but unfortunately 

 on his way thither he had contracted a severe attack of cold, the 

 consequence of walking and driving for four hours, after being 

 thoroughly wetted through by a heavy shower of rain. This brought 

 on a renewed attack of the remittent fever which he had formerly 

 caught in Greece. He commenced, however, his winter course of 

 lectures, which he continued up to the 9th of November, when he 

 was compelled to suspend them ; and notwithstanding the uninter- 

 mitting attention of his warmly attached medical friends, he died on 

 the 18th of that month, in the 40th year of his age. The cause of 

 death was afterwards ascertained to be a chronic abscess of the left 

 kidney, occasioning extensive abdominal disease, and baffling all the 

 resources of medical art. He bequeathed his scientific papers to 

 R. Godwin-Austen, Esq., Secretary of the Geological Society, and 

 his collections of natural history to the University of Edinburgh. 

 His unwearied activity is evidenced not only by the amount of his 

 actual publications, but by the accumulated mass of unpublished mate- 

 rials which he has left behind him. His rapid facility in drawing 

 gave him great advantages in the illustration both of his facts and of 

 his views regarding them. His speculative turn of mind is evinced by 

 numerous theoretical views, many of which, such as his comparison of 

 the morphologyof Sertularian zoophytes with that of flowering plants, 

 his observations on the distribution of marine animals as bearing on 

 geology, his theory of bathymetrical distribution, and his ideas on 

 the connexion between the distribution of the existing fauna and 

 flora of the British Isles, and the geological changes which have 

 aff*ected their area, have been worked out with great ingenuity. His 

 genial disposition made him the centre of a large body of attached 



