Ehrcnherg^s Discoveries — Notices of Eminent Men. 121 



volumes of our Transactions. In these he stated his object to be 

 to combine with his own observations much interesting informa- 

 tion 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 containing much of originality in 

 their views and researches, were, at the time, of considerable 

 utility. He died May 5th, 1S38, and, by his will, left to this 

 Society a very considerable and valuable mineralogical collection, 

 now in our Museum. 



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

 most zealously and actively engaged in the examination of the 

 celebrated Kirkdale Cavern. He measured and explored new 

 branches of the cave in addition to those first opened, and made 

 large collections of the teeth and bones, from which he sent speci- 

 mens 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* 

 Francois-Dominique de Reynaud, Comte de Montlosier, was 

 born at Clermont in Auvergne, April the IGth, 1755^ the year of 

 the celebrated earthquake of Lisbon. He was the youngest of 

 twelve children of a family of the smaller nobility of that prov- 

 ince, and Avas remarkable at an early age for the zeal with which 

 he pursued various 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 

 basaltic rocks, which occupied the attention of mineralogists du- 

 ring 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 as- 

 cribed. The theory of the extinct volcanos of Auvergne, the 

 subject of his researches, was the speculation which gave the main 

 impulse to scientific curiosity on this point. It is true that he 

 was not the originator of the opinions which he so ably ex- 



pounded 



perfectly 



that which it now appeal's so impossible not to see, the evidences 



ham, and Cumberland." First edition, 1S90; second edition, 1325.—** Contribu- 

 tions to tlie Flora of Cumberland." 1833.—" Addenda to the Flora of Northum- 

 berland and Durham." 1836. 

 Vol. wwu, No. 1.— July, 1839, bis. 16 



