THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE. 



NEW SERIES. DECADE IV. VOL. IV. 



No. XI.— NOVEMBER, 1897. 



<0:EiXG-Xl<TJ^JL, .i^ieTICXjES. 



L — Eminent Living Geologists : The Eev. P. B. Brodie, 



M.A., F.G.S.' 



(WITH A PORTEAIT, PLATE XX.) 



THE EEV. PETER BELLINGER BRODIE was bora in 

 London in 1815. His father, Mr. P. B. Brodie, was an eminent 

 conveyancer and barrister-at-law, while his uncle, Sir Benjamin C. 

 Brodie, Bart., the celebrated surgeon, was President of the Royal 

 Society from 1858 to 1861. 



While a youth, and resident with bis father at Lincoln's Inn 

 Fields, the younger P. B. Brodie acquired, a taste for Natural 

 History, and often went as a student to the Royal College of 

 Surgeons. Geology, in these early years, attracted his attention, 

 and to such good effect, that he was proposed as a Fellow of the 

 Geological Society of London by William Clift, the Curator of 

 the College of Surgeons, and he was elected so long ago as January, 

 1834, just before he went to Cambridge. At that time he was the 

 youngest Fellow ever admitted ; now he remains one of the oldest, 

 and, with one exception, the earliest elected of the present Fellows 

 of the Society. H. E. Strickland, with whom in after years 

 Mr. Brodie was much associated, was elected into the Geological 

 Society towards the end of the same year, 1834, and during the 

 Presidency of G. B. Greenough. At this time, Buckland and 

 Conybeare, Sedgwick, De la Beche and Fitton, Murchison and 

 Lyell, were all members of the Council. As Mr. Brodie tells us, 

 he then attended meetings of the Society held in Somerset House, 

 and listened to " many intellectual combats between the geological 

 giants of those days." 



Educated afterwards at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, he 

 naturally came under the inspiriting influence of Sedgwick. He 

 regularly attended the lectures of the famous Professor, and volun- 

 tarily assisted him in the Woodwardian Museum. Thus Mr. Brodie's 

 early interest in Geology was fostered, and he soon began to 



' Some of the particulars given in this brief biography were kindly furnished by 

 the Eev. P. B. Brodie, and others by Mr. S. S. Stanley. 



DECADE IV. VOL. IV. — NO. XI. 31 



