266 Geology. 



Beecke (B. VAN) 



Collected Mammalian remains from caverns of Sundwig, Westphalia ; 

 this collection purchased at a sale, 1853. 



Belcher (Admiral Sir EDWARD) [1799-1877] 



Appointed in 1852 to the command of an expedition to the Arctic in 

 search of Sir John Franklin, Belcher published in 1855 an account of it 

 entitled " The Last of the Arctic Voyages." His collection of Arctic 

 fossils was transferred from the Museum of Practical Geology in 1880. 



Bell (ALFRED) 



See BELL, ROBERT GEORGE. 



Bell (ROBERT GEORGE) [1833-1888] 



Robert Bell, who, with his brother Alfred, was known as a careful 

 worker in the British Pliocene rocks, was often employed as a collector by 

 others. Thus the Museum possesses three collections made by him. 

 First, his own, bought of his executors in 1888, and comprising 2730 

 specimens of Lamellibranchia, Gasteropoda, and Polyzoa, from the Crag, 

 mounted on cards, named, and accurately localised. Secondly, a series of 

 Pliocene shells from St. Erth, Cornwall, referred to by Bell and P. F. 

 Kendall (Quart. Journ. Geol Soc., 1886); this was the property of 

 S. V. Wood, jun., by whose widow it was presented in 1886. Lastly, a 

 collection of 3391 Crag Mollusca from Suffolk, representing 420 species, 

 some figured in S. V. Wood's Monograph (Palseont. Soc.) ; this was the 

 property of a Mr. Groom (alias Groom-Napier, styling himself Prince of 

 Mantua and Duke of Montferrat), from whose executors it was purchased, 

 through R. F. Damon, in 1894. 



Bell (THOMAS) 



Fossil Chelonia purchased from his collection, 1863. 



Belt (Mrs.) 



Presented non-marine Mollusca from Pleistocene deposits of Brentford 

 and Kew, 1891. 



Benett (ETHELDRED) [17 -1845] 



" For more than a quarter of a century, Miss E. Benett," of Norton 

 House, near Warminster, Wilts, "pursued with ardour and success the 

 investigation and collection of the organic remains of her native county. 

 ... To her zeal and talents and the liberal encouragement she gave the 

 local collectors, we are in a great measure indebted for our knowledge of 

 the fossils of the Chalk and Greensand of Wiltshire, and more particularly 

 of those in the neighbourhood of Warminster and Tisbury. . . . Her best 

 specimens were liberally presented to any individual or public museum 

 when the advancement of science would be thereby promoted " (London 

 Geol. Journ.). The encouragement of local collectors led to many of 

 her specimens being ingenious reconstructions from fragments of several 

 individuals or even species (Op. cit., p. 128). No such suspicion, however, 

 attaches to the fossil sponges discovered in the Greensand by Geo. Warren 

 of Wai-minster, collected for the most part by J. Baker of that place, and 

 described and figured by Miss Benett in " A Catalogue of the Organic 

 Remains of the County of Wilts " (privately printed, 1831), as well as in 



