Anniversary of iS^Q. Address of the President. 381 



which were printed in the fourth and fifth volumes of our Trans- 

 actions. In these he stated his object to be to combine \yith his oM-n 

 observations much interesting information on the subjects of the 

 quarries, and coal and lead mines, of those districts, which had long- 

 been accumulating, and was widely diffused among the professional 

 conductors of the mines. And these memoirs, though not contain- 

 ing hauch of originality in their views and researches, were, at the 

 time, of considerlible utility. He died May 5th, 1838, and, by his 

 will, left to this Society a very considerable and valuable mineralo- 

 gical collection, now in our Museum. 



Mr. William Salmond, of York, was one of the persons who was 

 most zealouslv and actively engaged in the examination of the cele- 

 brated Kirkdale Cavern. "He measured and explored new branches 

 of the cave in addition to those first opened, and made large collec- 

 tions of the teeth and bones, from which he sent specimens to the 

 Royal Institution of London, and to Cuvier at Paris. The bulk of 

 his collection was deposited in the Philosophical Society at York, 

 then newly established. 



I now proceed to notice our deceased Foreign Members. 

 Fran9ois-Dominique de Reynaud, Comte de Montlosier, was born 

 at Clermont in Auvergne, April the 16th, 1755, the year of the ce- 

 lebrated earthquake of Lisbon. He was the youngest of twelve 

 children of a family of the smaller nobility of that province, and was 

 remarkable at an early age for the zeal with which he pursued va- 

 rious branches of science and literature. 



Count Montlosier must ever be considered as one of the most 

 striking writers in that great controversy respecting the origin of ba- 

 saltic rocks, which occupied the attention of mineralogists during the 

 ' latter half of the last century ; and to which, in so large a degree, the 

 progress and present state of geology are to be ascribed. The theory 

 of the extinct volcanos of Auvergne, the subject of his researches, 

 was the speculation which gave the main impulse to scientific curi- 

 osity on this point. It is true that he was not the originator of the 

 opinions which he so ably expounded. Gucttard, in 1751, had seen, 

 vaguely and imperfectly, that which it now appears so im])0ssible 

 not to see, the evidences of igneous origin in the rocks of that di- 

 strict : and the elder Desmarest, whose examination of them began 

 in 1763, had made that classification of them, which is the basis, and 

 indeed the main substance, of the views still entertained with regard 

 to the structure of that most instructive region. His map of the 

 district, published in 1774 (in the Transactions of the Academy of 

 Paris/or 1771, according to a bad habit of that body still prevail- 

 ing), exhibits the distinction of modern currents of lava, ancient 

 currents, and rocks fused in the places where they now are, which 

 distinction supplies a key to the most extraordinary pha>nomc_na, 

 while it reveals to us a history more wonderful still. But striking 

 and persuasive as this view was, and fitted, apparently, to carry 



First edition, 1820; second edition, 1825.— "Contributions to the Flora 

 of Cumberland." 1833.—" Addenda to the Flora of Northumberland and 

 Durham." 1836. 



