Obituary— Mr. Wm. Reed, F.G.8. 285 



found their place in York Museum. The Leckenby collection is now 

 in the Cambridge Museum. Mr. Edward Wood bad his home 

 among the hills of Nortb-west Yorkshire, and from the Mountain 

 Limestone and contiguous strata of that district be formed the 

 collection which, added to that formerly presented to the Museum 

 by Mr. Eeed, raised that Museum to a high position among the 

 geological museums of this country. The Society is greatly in- 

 debted to Mr. W. Eeed for his presentation of these valuable collec- 

 tions, and also for the able service which for two years he rendered 

 as honorary curator in the arrangement of the collections. 



Mr. W. Keeping, M.A., a former keeper of the Museum, read a 

 paper at the monthly meeting of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society 

 held in January, 1881, upon the " Wood Collection." In it he says : 

 — The collection of fossils formed by the late Mr. Edward Wood, 

 F.G.S., of Richmond, Yorkshire, is the result of the constant atten- 

 tion and labour of more than 30 years of his lifetime. Living in 

 a district rich in some of the most beautiful and attractive of fossil 

 organic remains, and impelled by a strong natural love for palseon- 

 tology, Mr. Wood became an ardent collector of all specimens of 

 geological interest, and such was his success that be ultimately 

 became distinguished as the possessor of one of the finest private 

 geological collections in Britain. Naturally this collection is par- 

 ticularly rich in objects from the Yorkshire dales, especially his own 

 dale, Swaledale : but it also includes collections from many other 

 British localities which were obtained by the help of his many 

 scientific friends and acquaintances, in his own travels, or by his own 

 purchases. Thus the collection came to spread over a wide area both 

 in space and time, forming a fair representation of the whole of the 

 geological periods, but specially rich and valuable in certain forma- 

 tions. To the York Museum this collection is particularly valuable, 

 for it is precisely where we were poor that we here find the greatest 

 riches. It was in the Permian, Coal-measures, the Carboniferous 

 Limestone, and the Old Eed Sandstone that our collection, including 

 Mr. Eeed's original museum, was weakest; while in the Edward 

 Wood collection these groups are most perfectly represented. Mr. 

 W. Eeed, F.G.S., our honorary Curator of geology, was already 

 acquainted with Mr. Wood's collection, and knew how important an 

 addition it would be to the Society's Museum, and he therefore, as 

 soon as the way to its acquisition was open to him, at once decided 

 to purchase the collection and present it to the Societ3^ Asa private 

 collection of Carboniferous Limestone fossils Mr. Wood's museum 

 has never been equalled in England, and the other groups of the 

 Upper Palaeozoic rocks are also particularly fine. It is without 

 doubt in the Carboniferous Echinoderms, especially the Crinoids, 

 that the collection is most remarkable, and it is best known to 

 geologists as containing a magnificent series of those Crinoids or 

 "Sea Lilies " named in honour of their discoverer, Woodocrinus. Some 

 hundreds of specimens of this beautiful fossil were obtained by Mr. 

 Wood, the duplicates being liberally distributed throughout the 

 various Museums of Europe, while some 80 slabs, including all the 



