144 Obituary— Caroline Birley. 
In 1896 Miss Birley settled in London, taking up her residence at 
No. 14, Brunswick Gardens, Kensington, W., to which house she also 
transferred her museum. 
Having joined the British Association at Manchester in 1887, 
Miss Birley regularly attended its subsequent meetings and always 
attached herself to the Geological Section and its excursions. In 1897 
she went to Toronto with that body, and in a trip to Colorado obtained 
some excellent minerals. In 1899 a visit was paid to the Azores with 
the intention of collecting from the fossiliferous beds in Santa Maria, 
but insuperable obstacles intervened, and they were unable to reach 
that island from St. Michaels. In 1902 a collection was made from 
the Kimmeridgian and Oxfordian of the neighbourhood of Boulogne. 
Miss Birley’s last long expedition was to attend the British 
Association at Cape Town in August, 1905, accompanying it in all 
its travels as far as the Victoria Falls. In that year she placed in the 
hands of Mr. R. Bullen Newton, F.G.S., for description, a series of 
fossiliferous nodules from the beach off the Ormara Headland, facing 
_ the coast of Baluchistan in the Indian Ocean. These nodules, which 
contained numerous Tertiary mollusca, were figured and described in 
detail by Mr. Newton in the pages of the Grotocica, Magazine for 
July, 1905, pp. 298-308, Pls. XVI and XVII, to which Mr. Burrows 
added a notice of a Bryozoan (op. cit., pp. 303-305) with a text- 
figure; and Dr. H. Woodward described a new Crab (Weptunus 
Arabicus) and a group of Balani, of which he gave figures (op. cit., 
pp. 305-310). 
A new genus and species of Crustacean, obtained by Miss Birley 
from the Gault of Folkestone in 1900, was described by Dr. H. 
Woodward under the name of Mesodromilites Birleye (see Grou. Mae., 
1900, pp. 61-64, with text-figure). 
Miss Birley spent very much of her time in the Geological and 
Mineralogical Galleries of the British Museum naming her specimens, 
upon the arrangement of which she spared no labour or expense. 
Last year she was far from well, but her courage was so indomitable 
that she attended the meeting of the British Association at York in 
August last. In the Autumn she had a severe illness, after which she 
never regained her usual strength; but she continued to arrange and 
label her more recent acquisitions, and retained her interest in her 
museum to the end. Her last addition consisted in a large slab of 
New Red Sandstone from the Stourton Quarries, Cheshire, with 
Labyrinthodont footprints upon its surface. 
After a week’s illness from influenza this ardent geologist succumbed 
to heart-failure on the 15th February, 1907. We believe she has 
given directions that the best specimens in her collection are to be 
presented to the Trustees of the British Museum, for the Geological 
and Mineralogical Collections of the Natural History Branch in 
Cromwell Road, with remainder to the Manchester Museum, in the 
Owen’s College, Manchester. 
Miss Caroline Birley was buried at Lingfield Church, Surrey, on 
Tuesday, the 19th February, near the home of her brother, Mr. Francis 
Hornby Birley. 
