ee see 
3 
Biographical Notice of Edward Forbes. 381 
avocations the knowledge he had so pissing collected. Com- 
bining as he did a lively and vivid imagination with a mature and 
well-disciplined judgment, he was enabled to edocs with effect 
that power of generalization and abstraction which he so emi- 
nently possessed. His enlightened and comprehensive views on 
the numerous branches of “natural history which he cultivated, 
and which were founded mainly on his own experience, caused 
him from henceforth to be looked up to as one of the first of Brit- 
ish naturalists, and the works which he now published bear ample 
testimony to his well-founded reputation. Nor was it in England 
alone that his merits were recogni nized. In France, in Germany, 
in Italy, wherever men of science were to be found, the name of 
Edward Forbes was equally acknowledged as deserving a place 
in the first rank of scientific merit. 
Towards the end of 1846, he published with Lieut., now Cap- 
tain Spratt, an account of his travels in Lycia, a work in which 
we are at a loss to know whether most to admire the admirable 
details of archeology and art, or the equally graphic description 
of the botany, geology, and zoology which it contains. About 
this time appeared in the Proceedings and Transactions of our 
Society, his monograph on the South Indian Fossils sent to this 
country by MM. Kaye and Cunliffe and the Rev. W. H. Egerton. 
The report itself independently of the description of the fossils, 
is short, but it is not the less panini at, and is eminently charac- 
teristic of the author. He points out the general eae laste of 
the facies of the fossils to that of a Cretaceous period of Europe, 
and more particularly the lower portions of that series. His argu- 
ments are drawn rather from similarity, than from identity of spe- 
cies ; a subject to which he had particularly directed his attention 
during his researches in the Algean Sea. ‘The report is suite 
nently suggestive, and I would particularly mention that porti 
of it which yk to the occurrence in these Cretaceous beds a 
certain forms which are usually considered as characteristic of 
Tertiary formastibii and which very forms are now found in their 
greatest assemblages living in those eastern seas,—a fact, which, 
s, goes far to support the theory, that genera, like species, 
have geographical birthplaces as well as geographical capitals. 
About this time, also, he wrote one of the most remarkable 
contributions to the science of Geology, which has appeared in 
this country. It is published in the first volume of the Memoirs 
of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, and is entitled “On 
the Connexion between the Distribution of the existing Fauna 
and Flora of the British Islea, and the Geological changes which 
have affected their area.” “In this work,” to use words already 
printed, “the happy combination of great botanical and zoological 
knowledge is made to bear on some of the most intricate wr 
With regard to the age and relationship of the rocks of Gre 
Britain. 
