Geological Society. 447 



connected with a paper which he laid before the Royal Irish 

 Academy " On Geology as applicable to the Purposes of Naviga- 

 tion." 



Mr. David Scott was one of the numerous class of officers in the 

 service of the East India Company who have found means to com- 

 bine with the most exemplary discharge of their official duties, a con- 

 stant attention to the interests of literature and science. He was the 

 second son of Archibald Scott, Esq., of Montrose, and died prema- 

 turely in India in 1831, at the age of 45, having passed through 

 many offices of high trust with distinguished credit, and holding at 

 the time of his death the situations of Civil Commissioner in Bung- 

 poor and other districts, and agent to the Governor General in the 

 North-east of Bengal. His exertions and success in discharging his 

 official functions, and in promoting the welfare of the country in 

 which he was placed, by diffusing education, were highly appreciated, 

 and a monument has been erected to his memory by the Supreme 

 Government of India. Mr. Scott possessed great knowledge in 

 several branches of science not immediately connected with this 

 institution, and lost no opportunity of attending to geological re- 

 search. Our Transactions are indebted to him for the substance 

 of a valuable paper communicated by Mr. Colebrooke*, " On the 

 Geology of the North-eastern Border of Bengal," in which is de- 

 scribed a remarkable deposit on the left bank of the Burrampooter 

 river, containing an assemblage of fossils that bear an extraordinary 

 likeness to those of the London clay. " Among the remains of fishes," 

 Mr. Colebrooke states, " bony palates and the fins of the Balistes are 

 common to the Indian clay and to that of Sheppey ; and the shells 

 of Cooch-behar bear a strong generic, if not specific, resemblance 

 to the marine formations above the chalk in France and England." 

 This communication contains also some valuable facts respecting 

 a succession of strata, like those of our coal-fields, in the Tista 

 and Subuk rivers ; and in the same volume, is an extract from a 

 letter written by Mr. Scott, describing the situation of a limestone 

 and clay containing Nummulites at Robagiri, a village in the North- 

 east of Bengal. Such resemblances, though they are far from esta- 

 blishing the contemporaneous formation — much less the continuity 

 — of the groups in which they occur, are interesting, from the proof 

 they furnish, of the operation of similar causes in very distant parts 

 of the former surface of the globe. 



On the accounts of the past year put into your hands today, I will 

 make but one observation. From the report of the Auditors it ap- 

 pears that the balance of disposable property in favour of the So- 

 ciety, taken at a very moderate estimate, is £2010, while the total 

 amount of the compositions of all the compounders in the List of 

 Fellows since the foundation of the Society does not exceed £'2394-. 

 The difference is less than £400. If, then, the value of the collec- 

 tions, library, and furniture belonging to the Society be taken into 

 account, our actual property considerably exceeds the claims of all 



* Scries II. vol. i. pp. V.\->— 140. 



