EDWARD FORBES 25 



that he was then, in fact, mainly a geologist. He identified 

 himself thoroughly and intimately with the members of the 

 Geological Society and with his colleagues of the Geological 

 Survey, with whom, of course, he was constantly working 

 both in the field and at the Jermyn Street Museum. His 

 work as palaeontologist was to identify the large numbers 

 of fossils collected by the surveyors, and to give any informa- 

 tion he could as to the conditions under which they had lived. 

 In all this work, which occupied some of the best years of his 

 life, he was, however, what he called a " Zoo-Geologist," 

 working on the border-line of the two sciences and throwing 

 light on both, bringing zoological knowledge in regard to 

 the animals represented by the fossils to bear upon geological 

 problems, and showing on the other hand how geological 

 changes in the past help to explain the distribution of animals 

 and plants at the present day. In some respects this was 

 the finest and most original work that he ever did. During 

 this period he was one of the founders of the Palseonto- 

 graphical Society, which has issued a noble series of volumes, 

 some of the earlier of which (e.g., British Tertiary EcJiino- 

 derms) are Forbes's work. He also contributed largely to 

 other geological publications. 



We can only mention two of the more important of these 

 pieces of work. One of these was his careful investigation 

 of the layers of supposed Wealden rocks, known as the 

 Purbeck beds. In the autumn of 1849 he went down to the 

 coast of Dorset and spent some months making a most 

 minute investigation of the strata, with the result that he 

 proved that these beds really belong to the Oolitic series. 

 Sir Archibald Geilde tells us that, " with magnifying glass at 

 eye, he crept over the faces of the rock, layer by layer, noting 

 the peculiarities of each from top to bottom. As the result 

 of this detailed scrutiny, while there was no evidence that 

 any physical disturbance had taken place in the area during 

 the deposition of the whole of the strata, the testimony of the 

 included fossils revealed a remarkable series of alternations of 



