430 Obituary — Prof. Beshayes. 



to be attributable rather to icefloes and icebergs and to coast-ice and 

 glaciers depositing their moraines in the sea ; and therefore would 

 properly come under the description of Marine Glacial Drift. 



Drift, however, which has been reconstructed since the Glacial 

 Epoch could not of course be considered glacial, but would perhaps 

 be appropriately distinguished as " glacialoid." 



The question, however, of the nomenclature of Glacial Drift is quite 

 beside that of the order of the deposits at present understood by that 

 term. 



I regret that I should seem to have misquoted Mr. Kinahan's 

 letter ; but I think, for I have not the Numbers of the Geol. Mag. at 

 hand, he must have misunderstood me, as I was quite aware that he 

 admitted an Upper Boulder-clay in Ireland, but not one above the 

 Middle gravels, which was the only one to which I referred. 



J. A. BlBDS. 



Tenby, Aug. Zrd, 1875. 



OBITTJABY. 



PEOFESSOE G. P. DESHAYES, 



Fob. Memb. Geol. Soc. Lond. 



Gerard Paul Deshayes was born at Nancy, 13th May, 1797, his 

 father being at the time Professor in the Central School of that city. 

 He was educated at Strasbourg, and came to reside in Paris in 1819, 

 where he commenced the study of fossil shells, for which in after 

 years he became so justly celebrated. 



Among other foreign explorations, he visited Algeria, and sub- 

 sequently published the results of his expedition in a work remarkable 

 alike for the beauty of its illustrations, as well as for its high scientific 

 value. 



A careful study of his extensive collections of Tertiary shells 

 (greatly facilitated by his intimate acquaintance with recent species) 

 had suggested to Deshayes the propriety of dividing them chrono- 

 logically into three great groups, according to their relative ages. 

 These groups were found to agree, in the main, with the divisions 

 arrived at by Lyell, and to which he subsequently gave the names 

 of Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene. To give weight to this classifi- 

 cation, Lyell induced Deshayes to prepare a series of tables, which 

 appeared in the third volume of the first edition of the " Principles," 

 in 1830. 



Deshayes' collections served as the basis of his great work, " On 

 the Fossil Shells of the Environs of Paris" (published from 1824-37, 

 and the subsequent supplement extending from 1856 up to 1867), 

 forming eight great quarto volumes. He published an Elementary 

 Treatise on Conchology ; and he revised, with Professor H. Milne- 

 Edwards, Lamarck's Histoire des Animaux sans Vertebres, and 

 Ferussac's Histoire des Mollusques Terrestres et Fluviatile. He pre- 

 pared the Catalogue of the Veneridce for the British Museum. He 

 also published numerous Memoirs, both separately and in various 

 scientific journals. 



