XXXU PBOCEEDINGS OF THE 



teen years, during wliicli he was an active member of the Literary 

 Institution of that city. Mr. Pratt became a Fellow of this 

 Society in the year 1829, and was in the same year also admitted 

 into the Greological Society, in whose Transactions he has pub- 

 lished several valuable and interesting memoirs ; amongst which 

 may be enumerated, " On the Existence of Anoplotherium and 

 Palceotherium in the Lower Freshwater Formation at Binstead, 

 near Ryde, in the Isle of Wight," ar.d " On the Osseous Caves of 

 Santo Giro, near Palermo," in which he showed from the boring of 

 Lithodoimi,s that the country had undergone elevation subsequent 

 to the habitation of the Mediterranean by existing species. In 

 1843 he read a memoir " On the Geology of the neighbourhood of 

 Bayonne," and in 1852 a more important one " On the Greology 

 of Catalonia," in which he corrected some grave errors inserted in 

 the French map of the district. 



This excellent and useful geologist and estimable man died at 

 his residence, Mellone Yilla, Fulham Road, on the 22nd Septem- 

 ber, 1863, aged 73. 



Charles Tomkins, M.D., who died on the 17th May, at the age 

 of 68. He was formerly in considerable practice at Abingdon in 

 Berkshire, but has latterly resided at Weston-super-Mare in 

 Somersetshire, to which place he removed in 1852. He was an 

 intimate friend of Mr. Bicheno, formerly Secretary to this Society, 

 and by whom he was proposed as a Fellow of the Society, into 

 which he was elected in November 1823. 



Dr. Tomkins was a man of considerable acquirements, and took 

 especial interest in the extension of education among the poorer 

 classes, acting for some years as Secretary to the British School 

 at Abingdon. 



To the close of his life he continued to interest himself in 

 botanical pursuits ; and so lately as 1859 forwarded to the Society 

 specimens of the rare Chrysocoma Linosyris, from Weston-super- 

 Mare, and of Pceonia corallina, gathered, in flower, on the Steep 

 Holmes Island, its only British habitat. 



Mr. Joseph Woods was born at Stoke Newington, Middlesex, 

 on the 24th of August, 1776. His parents were members of the 

 Society of Friends ; his mother being a daughter of Mr. Samuel 

 Hoare, whose son Samuel eventually became the senior partner 

 in the banking-house of Hoare, Barnett, and Co., of Lombard 

 Street. His father, although successfully engaged in commercial 

 pursuits, was a gentleman of high classical and antiquarian at- 

 tainments, and a frequent gratuitous contributor, both in Latin 



