PEOCEEDINGS OF THE 



OBITUAEY NOTICES. 



The Secretary then read the following notices of deceased Fel- 

 lows and Foreign JKemhers : — 



For the brief notice which I am about to offer to the Society, of 

 Henry James Brooke, Esq., I am chiefly indebted to an article in 

 the last Anniversary ' Proceedings ' of the E-oyal Society, of which 

 what follows is little more than an abstract. He was born on the 

 25th of May, 1771, in the city of Exeter, where his relatives were 

 engaged in the manufacture of broadcloth, but was himself des- 

 tined for the bar, for which profession he had nearly completed 

 his studies when an advantageous opening led him to engage in 

 the Spanish wool-trade. He spent nearly two years in Spain, and 

 subsequently formed an establishment in London, where he took 

 up his abode in 1802, devoting his leisure to the study of mine- 

 ralogy, geology, and botany, but especially of the two former 

 sciences, to which he became devotedly attached. He became a 

 Eellow of the Geological Society in 1815, of the Linnean in 1818, 

 and of the Royal in 1819. When the trade in Spanish wool was 

 in a great measure superseded by that with Germany, Mr. Brooke 

 turned his attention to other objects of commercial pursuit more 

 congenial to his tastes, and entered warmly into the formation of 

 companies for working the mines of South America; but these 

 speculations having for the most part failed, he became secretary 

 to the London Life Assurance Association, of which he had been 

 one of the founders. In 1828 he maintained the principles on 

 which the business of that association was carried on, in " Obser- 

 vations on a pamphlet by Mr. Morgan, entitled a View of the 

 Rise and Progress of the Equitable Society." A slight concussion 

 of the brain, the result of being thrown down by collision with 

 a horse, and followed by symptoms of undue cerebral excitement, 

 compelled him for some years to limit his customary mental efforts ; 

 and during this period he occupied himself in the collection of 

 shells and of engravings. Of the former he made a large collec- 

 tion, which he afterwards presented to the University of Cam- 

 bridge. While engaged in its formation, he published, in the 

 fifth volume of the ' Zoological Journal,' a paper on " Conchology, 

 regarded as a distinct branch of Science," in which he maintains 

 that " the proper study of shells may not inaptly be considered as 

 analogous to that of the skeletons of the higher classes of animals, 

 and may be regarded as the comparative anatomy of the molluscous 



