640 
to see our success. In late years, as in early life, Dr. Yelloly was 
forward and at his post when any liberal measure was proposed 
connected with the progress of science; he took an active part in 
the formation of the British Association for the Advancement of 
Science, and when that body met at Birmingham he performed the 
duties of President of its medical section. 
The Rey. J. M¢Enery, a Roman Catholic clergyman, and a zeal- 
ous fossil osteologist, was first brought into geological notice by his 
labours in the bone-caves of Devonshire, near Torquay, where he 
resided. His prolonged researches in these caves produced an im- 
mense collection of fossil bones of the same species of quadrupeds 
as those which occurred in the celebrated Kirkdale cavern. The 
most striking inference from this collection, was a perfect demon- 
stration of the agency of hyzenas in collecting the herbivorous ani- 
mals into caverns during long periods, proved by the absence of 
rolled bones and the abundance of fractured osseous fragments 
bearing the marks of having been gnawed by teeth; in short, con- 
firming in a very remarkable manner the inhabited cave theory 
propounded by Dr. Buckland. Mr. M‘Enery’s collection of the 
bones of British cavern quadrupeds, which is one of high merit, 
will, I understand, be soon disposed of to the public; and I trust 
that part of it at least will find a resting-place in our great national 
collection at the British Museum. 
PaLmozoic GEOLOGY. 
SILURIAN—-DEVONIA N—CARBONIFEROUS. 
It was long after a true principle of classification, founded on the 
succession of organic life, had been applied to the tertiary and 
secondary rocks, that the same method was used to work out the 
order of the oldest strata in which the remains of animals have been — 
discovered. My own efforts, directed for several years to this end, 
have been so distinctly recognized by those whom I now address, 
as establishing a step by which the relative age of the older fossili- 
ferous strata has been subsequently developed, that I ought to apolo- 
gise for offering, on this occasion, even the shortest historical sketch 
of the process by which we have arrived at our present paleeozoic 
classification. Some statement seems, however, to be called for, 
now that the subject is passing into many hands and into various 
countries. Having satisfied myself, after a labour of eight years, 
that I had amassed all the materials requisite to establish the ex- 
istence of a sequence of rocks distinct from the Old Red Sand- 
stone and Carboniferous Limestone, and having applied local names 
to each of the ancient formations so situated, I was strongly urged 
by many scientific friends, both at home and abroad, to propose 
some general name for the whole group. I fixed upon the ancient 
geographical term “ Silurian,” which was approved of, and has 
since been adopted, not merely in my own country, but in the most 
distant parts of Europe and in America*. No sooner, however, 
* When Ostorius, the Roman general, conquered Caractacus, he boasted 
