Obituary — Charles William Peach, A.L.S. 191 



the study of Natural History, and began to make a collection. He 

 made the acquaintance of the Be v. J. Lay ton, then living at Catfield. 

 With this excellent geologist he explored the cliffs and the sub- 

 merged Forest-bed, and assisted him greatly in collecting the large 

 series of teeth and bones of elephants which are now preserved in 

 the British Museum. 



From Norfolk Beach was sent to Lyme Begis and Charmouth in 

 Dorsetshire, and thence into Cornwall, where he worked at the 

 geological formations along the coasts, and found fossils where no 

 fossils had been found before. At the meeting of the British 

 Association held at Blymouth in 1841, he read his first paper entitled 

 " The Organic Fossils of Cornwall." The following year at the 

 Manchester Meeting he read a paper before the Zoological Section, " On 

 the Marine Fauna of the Cornish Coast." Charles Darwin, in his 

 monograph on the Balanidce (Bay Society, 1854, p. 157), quotes Mr. 

 Beach's observations on the exuviation of the integument of the 

 Balani on the Cornish coast. He was acknowledged to be one of 

 the most original observers in Geology and Zoology, and was taken 

 by the hand by Murchison, De la Beche, Buckland, Forbes, Daubeny 

 and Agassiz. 



While residing at Fowey, he was made an Honorary Member of 

 all the local scientific Societies of the Duchy, and he added many 

 organic remains from the Devonian rocks to the collection of the 

 Boyal Geological Society of Cornwall, and this collection seems to 

 have remained as he left it nearly 40 years ago. 



One of Beach's most important discoveries was the detecting 

 remains of Bteraspidian fish-shields, in the Lower Devonian Slates 

 of Bolperro in Cornwall. These fossils were recognized as fish by 

 Mr. Beach in 1843. In 1851 Brof. Mc'Coy determined the fossil to 

 be a Sponge ! and named it Steganodictyum Comubicum. Brof. Ferdi- 

 nand Boemer subsequently determined it to be the bone of a Cuttle- 

 fish, and named it Archceoteuthis Dunensis (1855) ; and in 1868 Brof. 

 Bay Lankester, in a note to the Geological Society, stated that 

 Huxley and Salter, as well as himself, had determined it to be the 

 cephalic plate of a Bteraspidian fish (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. 1868, 

 vol. xxiv. p. 546), which he described under the name of Scapliaspis 

 Cornubicus. He says, "The merit of first recognizing the fish-nature 

 of these remains belongs to Mr. Peach, who more than twenty years 

 since wrote of them as such" (op. cit. p. 547). See also Geol. Mag. 

 1868, Vol. Y. pp. 247-248, and 1869, Vol. VI. pp. 77-78. Mr. 

 Bengelly, writing on the same subject, says: — "Mr. Beach's judgment 

 has received the fullest justification, and we all congratulate him 

 heartily on the fact" (Trans. Devonshire Assoc, for 1868). 



Having been transferred from the Coast-guard to the Customs, 

 Beach was removed from Cornwall to the north of Scotland, being 

 stationed first at Beterhead, and afterwards at Wick. It was whilst 

 at the latter place that he made the acquaintance of Bobert Dick, 

 the Thurso Baker-Geologist and Botanist, and the account of their 

 friendship and mutual studies is contained in some of the most 

 interesting chapters in Dr. Smiles' " Life of Bobert Dick," part of 



