OBITUARY. ; 575 
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SEARLES VALENTINE WOOD, F.G.S. 
Born Fes. 14ru, 1798; Diep Ocr. 267TH, 1880. 
R. WOOD was born on St. Valentine’s Day, 1798, hence his name. 
He went to sea as a midshipman in the “Thames” (one of the 
East India Company’s mercantile fleet) in 1811; and continued in 
that service until the year 1826, when, being disappointed in obtain- 
ing the command of a ship that had been promised him, he retired 
from a maritime life, and devoted himself to palzontological studies, 
Settling in his native place in Suffolk, he gave the larger part of his 
attention to the Crag, but he collected extensively from the Hamp- 
shire Tertiaries ; and for the purpose of working out the relation of 
these to the beds of the Paris basin, he formed an extensive collection 
of the French Eocene Mollusca. 
From these materials, and from correspondence with Deshayes 
and other French savans, he was prepared to have taken up the 
description of the English Eocene Mollusca long before he actually did 
so, circumstances having determined his undertaking the description 
of the Mollusca from the Upper Tertiaries first. He also formed a 
considerable collection of recent Mollusca for comparison in working 
out the relations of the Mollusca from Tertiary formations. Having 
left Suffolk from ill-health, and settledin London, he was in 1857 
introduced to Sir Charles (then Mr.) Lyell ; and was associated with 
him in the endeavour in which Lyell was then mainly engaged, to 
work out a better knowledge of the Tertiary formations, which up 
to a period not long before that time had been regarded as of small 
account, in comparison with the “Secondary ” group. In this task 
Lyell relied principally on 8. V. Wood and the late G. B. Sowerby 
for the determination of the identity of the Molluscan remains from 
various countries with those found fossil in England, and with 
the Molluscan fauna living in existing seas, as far as these were 
then known. Mr. Wood also for a few months about this time acted 
as Curator of the Museum of the Geological Society. 
Urged to the task by Lyell, he commenced (with the co-operation 
of the present G. B. Sowerby as engraver and intended publisher), 
the description of the “Crag Mollusca”; and considerable progress 
having been made with the manuscript and plates of the first, or 
‘“‘Univalve ” part of this work, when the Paleeontographical Society 
was formed in 1847, this part formed the first volume of the 
magnificent series of scientific publications which have been issued 
by that Society. The rest of the ‘Crag Mollusca” followed in 
subsequent years; and upon the completion of this work, and in 
recognition of his labours generally in connexion with the Tertiary 
Mollusca, the Council of the Geological Society awarded to Mr. 
Wood in the year 1860 the Wollaston medal. A large supplement 
to this work, embodying the discoveries which had subsequently 
accumulated, was prepared by Mr. Wood; and this, accompanied by 
an introduction describing geologically the formations from which 
the remains embraced by the work had been obtained, from the pen 
of his son and of Mr. F. W. Harmer, was issued by the Palzonto- 
