526 
bington, in making the necessary arrangements and pecuniary sub- 
scriptions to engage Dr. Berger to travel, first in Devonshire and 
Cornwall, and subsequently in the Isle of Man and north of Ireland, 
and to prepare the geological accounts of these districts, which 
appear in the three first volumes of our Transactions, forming curi- 
ous and instructive documents as to the state of geological know- 
ledge in England thirty years ago. Dr. Laird never published any 
paper, either scientific or medical, nor contributed to our Proceed- | 
ings; but we owe to him the judicious selection of our motto from 
the ovum Organum, which still stands on the first page of, every 
volume of our Transactions. Having served three years he retired 
from the office of Secretary to devote himself to the practice of his 
profession, and not long after, being in the prime of life, was seized 
with a paralytic stroke, which obliged him to pass the remainder 
of his days in close retirement. 
Dr. Laird was an excellent mineralogist, possessed considerable 
talents, extensive information in his profession, and a most cheerful 
disposition, and was greatly esteemed and beloved by his brethren ; 
and although for many years cut off from any active intercourse 
with our proceedings, has left his name enrolled high on the list of 
our first and essential benefactors. 
Mr. Rospert F. Seavey M.R.A.S., and lately in the East India 
Company’s Civil Service at St. Helena, was a member of a family 
long established in that island; he is known in geology as the au- 
thor of a work, published in 1834 by Ackermann, on the Geognosy 
of the Island of St. Helena, illustrated in a series of views, plans 
and sections, accompanied with explanatory remarks and observa- 
tions. He was also the constructor of a beautiful and, elaborate 
large plaster model of the island of St.. Helena, now in the Hast 
India Company's Military College at Addiscombe, founded .on sur- 
veys and observations made by himself during a period of fourteen 
years. In an instructive series of coarse but very effective litho- 
graphic plates, which form the chief material of his volume on St. 
Helena, he has so graphically represented the peculiar, conditions of 
the different varieties of igneous rocks which chiefly. compose this 
island, that an eye experienced in the various appearances of beds 
and dykes of lava and basalt, at once feels conscious of the fidelity 
of the portraits he has given of the different modifications of the ver- 
tically columnar stracture of the horizontal strata, and of the hori- 
zontally columnar structure of the dykes represented in his views of 
many portions of this island. Some of these plates express the 
fantastic shapes and castellated forms of residuary insulated frag- 
ments, both of dykes and columnar strata, which are familiar to us 
in the voleanie rocks of Puy en Velay, and in the Vivarais and 
Valence. St. Helena is bounded on all sides by inaccessible pre- 
cipices, of which many extensive views are given in the engravings. 
Besides the numerous varieties of scorie, lava, and basalt, of which 
the island is mainly composed, he states it to abound, especially in 
the southern quarter, with hills of stratified limestone devoid of 
shells: whilst in three or four parts of the island there occur ma- 
