Geological Society :■ — Anniversary of 1839. 233 



T cannot close my enumeration of the valuable contributions 

 for which we are indebted to Mr. Owen, without remarking how 

 well our anticipations have been verified, when, in awarding him 

 the Wollaston medal last year, we considered the labors which 

 we thus distinguished as only the beginning of an enlarged series 

 of scientific successes ; and how well also Mr. Owen's own de- 

 claration, that he should lose no available time or opportunity 

 which could be applied to palseontological research, has been 

 borne out by the services he has rendered that branch of our 

 science. 



In the remainder of my review of what has been done among 

 us in Palasontology, I must necessarily be very brief I have 

 already mentioned the discovery of fossil fishes in Bagshot sand. 

 These fishes have supplied three new genera, which Dr. Buckland 

 has distinguished and has named JEdaphodon, Passalodon, and 

 Ameihodon ; of which the two first ofier combinations of the char- 

 acters of bony and cartilaginous fishes. Mr. Stokes has given us 

 his views of the structure of the animal to which belonged those 

 fossils with which we are so familiar under the name of Orthoce- 

 ratites. He is of opinion, that these fossils, in their living condi- 

 tion, existed as a shell, enveloped within the body of the animal 

 to which they belonged. He has distinguished three genera of 

 these shells, to which he assigns the names Actinoceras, Ortnoce- 

 ras, and Hiironia. The Marquis of Northampton also has exam- 

 ined those minute spiral shells which occur in the chalk and 

 chalk flints, and have been termed Spirolinites. And, finally, 

 under this head I must mention Mr. Alfred Smee's paper, on the 

 state in which animal matter is usually found in fossils. 



Mr. Austen's hypothesis of the origin of the limestone of Devon, 

 though belonging in some measure to Geological Dynamics, may 

 perhaps be mentioned here, since he explains the position of those 

 beds by reference to the habits of the coral animal. Mr. Austen 

 has already shown himself to us as an excellent observer ; and in 

 constructing geological maps, a task requiring no ordinary talents 

 and temper, he has earned our admiration. We shall therefore 

 not be thought, I trust, to depreciate his labors if we receive with 

 less confidence, speculations in their nature more doubtful. As 

 we can hardly suppose the calcareous beds of Devon to have had 

 an origin different from those of other countries, we cannot help 

 receiving with some suspicion, a doctrine which would subvert 



Vol. xxsvii, No. 2.— July-October, 1839. 30 



