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Official Changes: Appointment of Professor E. Forbes. 513 
gratitude can be too strong when we record his labours as a 
geologist, the value we entertain of his official services, and 
the pang of deep regret we experience in his retirement from this 
Society. 
For a while the vacancy occasioned by the retirement of Mr. 
Lonsdale was not filled up; but the value which was attached 
to the office was attested by the fact, that nine candidates 
claimed our suffrage. The selection of Professor E. Forpes 
leads me naturally to report to you the-principal geological results 
at which our new Curator has arrived during his recent researches 
in the Mediterranean seas, as they are distinctly connected with 
the award of the Wollaston fund during a former year, to assist 
him in prosecuting his inquiries in the Mediterranean or Red 
Seas. 
Mr. Forbes observed marine tertiary strata abounding in shells at 
an elevation of 4000 feet in the Lycian Taurus, and he fixed the age 
of two distinct tertiary groups in the Greek islands. He also deter- 
mined that the freshwater deposits of Asia Minor and the Sporades 
belong to two separate groups, the relations of which with the marine 
tertiary strata prove that there were two eras of submergence and 
elevation, in that region, during the Tertiary period. He instituted a 
careful comparison between the organic remains of these beds and 
the living inhabitants of the adjacent sea, noticing the conditions 
under which each are found, and thus learnt that in the newest of 
these tertiaries (Newer Pliocene), the remains of such species as 
have ceased to exist in the Mediterranean are, for the most part, 
at present living in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean ; and hence he very 
logically infers, that the former conditions of the Newer Pliocene 
period, which imply a similar and continuous submarine area, were 
interrupted by that elevation of land which separated the Egean and 
adjacent portions of the Mediterranean from the Red Sea, the faunas 
of which are materially distinct from each other. 
Mr. Forbes explored a submarine tract of 300 miles in width, 
dredging in all depths between 1 and 230 fathoms. At less than 
100 fathoms, the bottom often consisted of white chalky sediment, 
which extended throughout the Egean, and was invariably inhabited 
by the same species of Foraminifera. At a depth of 200 fathoms 
Mollusea only, of the genera Tellina, Corbula, Arca, and Dentalium 
were found, but associated with Annelides, Star-fishes, Crustaceans, 
and Zoophytes. Lastly, he ascertained the range and charac- 
ters of 500 species of existing Mollusca and of numerous associated 
Radiata. Among the former were species which live indifferently 
at all depths between 10 and 150 fathoms, and several of them 
(including Buccinum semistriatum, Dentalium quadrangulare, and 
Pleurotoma crispata) which had hitherto been known only in a fossil 
state. By this examination he also arrived at the important fact, 
that such species as are abundant in a fossil are extremely rare 
in a living state, and vice versd; and thus he lays before us the 
last remnants of a former state of the surface of whose existence we 
were ignorant, accompanied by the descendants of animals, which, 
