19° Annual Report of the Council. 



active support of all educational and philanthropic causes 

 that he will be best remembered. He was for many years 

 president of the Manchester Mechanics' Institute, and bore 

 a prominent part in the transactions by which it was 

 converted into the Technical School. In 1849 he was 

 nominated among the trustees of the Manchester Grammar 

 School, and for many years he continued to serve its 

 interests, contributing largely to the improvement of its 

 educational apparatus, to the erection of new buildings 

 and to the increasing of its facilities for physical training. 

 In 1870 he became a member of the first Manchester 

 School board : he did not, however, continue on the 

 subsequent Boards. The restoration and preservation of 

 Chetham Hospital were due to his benevolence. But 

 perhaps his greatest services to education were those in 

 connection with Owens College, to which he remained a 

 constant and liberal friend, and of which he was a life 

 governor. He was elected a member of the Society on 

 March 22nd, 1864, and died at his residence, Claremont, 

 Pendleton, on March 17th, 1892. He was a liberal donor 

 to the Society's Centenary Fund, and also to the Joule 

 Memorial Fund, of which latter he was the treasurer. 



C. Ferdinand von Romer was born at Hildersheim, 

 in Hanover, on January 5, 18 18. His father was a 

 Councillor of the Hanover High Court of Justice. He 

 received his early education in the Evangelical Gymnasium 

 of Hildersheim, and subsequently studied at Gottingen, 

 Heidelberg, and Berlin, receiving his degree of Doctor of 

 Philosophy at the University of Berlin in 1842. While 

 studying at Berlin, he engaged in investigations on the older 

 rocks of Western Germany, and in 1844 published the 

 results. In 1845 he proceeded to America and engaged 

 specially in the investigation of the Palaeozoic and Cre- 

 taceous rocks of Texas, publishing the results in papers 



