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DANIEL SHARPE was born in London in 1806. His mother, who 

 died a few weeks after his birth, was sister to Samuel Rogers the 

 poet. He was educated at Walthamstow, and as a boy early showed 

 a taste for the study of natural history, but he did not commence 

 seriously to work at geology till he was admitted a Fellow of the 

 Geological Society in June 1829. In the same year he gave his 

 first memoir to the Society, "On a new species of Ichthyosaurus, 

 &c." /. grandipes which, however, it afterwards appeared, had 

 been previously described by Conybeare, under the name of I. tenui- 

 rostris, 



Throughout the greater part of his life Mr. Sharpe was actively 

 engaged as a merchant, and his business connexion with the wine- 

 growing districts of Portugal occasionally leading him there, in 1832, 

 1839, 1848 and 1849 he gave to the Geological Society a series of 

 memoirs on the rocks in the neighbourhood of Lisbon and Oporto. 

 The first is a mere sketch of the general arrangement of the 

 Tertiary and Secondary rocks by a young and intelligent geologist ; 

 the second, on the same subject, is fuller and more definite, but not 

 sufficiently complete in the determination of fossils to fix the precise 

 age of the strata described. It contains, however, in an appendix, 

 some observations of great value on the comparative effects of the 

 great earthquake of 1755 on the strata on which Lisbon stands. The 

 destructive effects of this shock were chiefly confined to the area 

 occupied by the soft tertiary beds, while the buildings erected on the 

 more solid Hippurite limestone and chalk escaped entirely. The 

 line of division between the shattered and entire buildings corre- 

 sponded precisely with the boundaries of the strata. This subject has 

 since been elaborated by Mr. Mallet in his Reports on Earthquakes to 

 the British Association. In his third memoir Mr. Sharpe describes 

 the granitic, gneissic, clay-slate and coal-bearing rocks of Vallongo 

 near Oporto. The clay-slate he proved by its fossils to be of Lower 

 Silurian age, and his sections show that the strata bearing anthracitic 

 coal underlie the slate, and rest on gneiss pierced by granite. He 

 thence concluded that the coal is of Lower Silurian age. In the 

 present state of knowledge regarding that country, it is impossible to 

 deny that this may be the case, but it must be remembered that the 

 few remains of plants discovered in these strata are considered by 

 palaeontologists to present characters indicative of "Carboniferous" 



