S8 REMINISCENCES OF 



the late Mr. Moore of York, and I determined upon 

 a pedestrian ramble through the meadows between 

 Kew and Mortlake in order to see Fritillaria meleagris 

 growing in its native swamps. At the same time I 

 occasionally relieved the monotony of study by 

 spending an evening at a meeting of the Geological 

 Society, then in the very climax of its youthful and 

 energetic career. There I had the pleasure of 

 associating with such men as Sedgwick, Murchison, 

 Graham, Lonsdale, Greenhow, James Yates, the 

 Marquis of Northampton, Mantell, Sir Philip Egerton, 

 Lord Cole, afterwards Earl of Enniskillen, and 

 Captain Basil Hall a galaxy of geological stars of 

 whom not one remains. 



I was only once tempted to touch practical 

 geological work. Professor Graham, afterwards 

 Master of the Mint, and the author of the scientific 

 discovery of the functional difference between 

 colloids and crystalloids, was extremely kind to 

 me. He had applied to a friend in Syria to send 

 him some mineral bodies from that region, but when 

 at length a case arrived, he found it to contain 

 nothing but fossils ; these he handed over to me, 

 that I might make practical use of them. They 

 came from Beyrout and the Lebanon district, about 

 the geology of which very little was known at that 

 time. I soon found they were of the greatest 

 interest, having among them fossils of extreme 

 rarity ; hence I drew up a brief memoir descriptive 

 of them, which I read to the Geological Society. 



