Ohituarij — Charles Moore. 95 



organism could have got into such an unlikely place as the middle 

 of a hard round stone. He sought out a book on geology, and read 

 it with avidity, and the keen interest thus first awakened never 

 flagged even to the end. From this early date Charles Moore 

 became a collector of fossils, and an accumulator of geological facts, 

 and before he removed from Ilminster to Bath he had already 

 formed a considerable collection, and become thoroughly acquainted 

 with the geology of the district in which he lived. Brought up to 

 the business of a Bookseller, he was for some time engaged at the 

 Grand Pump Eoom Library, Batb. He subsequentl}'' married the 

 only daughter of Mr. Deare, of Widcombe, and from that time he 

 relinquished business and devoted his whole life and energy to 

 geological investigations, and to the service of the City of Bath, 

 of which he was an Alderman. Those who can recall the meeting 

 of the British Association at Bath, in 1864, will doubtless remember 

 Mr. Charles Moore's paper " On the Geology of the South-West of 

 England," ^ in which he described the " RhEetic Beds," a group 

 of strata which had before escaped the notice of geologists in this 

 country. These beds, situated intermediate between the Lias and 

 the Trias, so largely developed in the Eheetic Alps, ai'e but thinly 

 represented in this country ; they are nevertheless of the highest 

 palaeontological interest. Mr. Moore described the contents of three 

 cartloads of detritus of Ehtetic Beds which had been washed into 

 a fissure of Carboniferous Limestone at Holwell, near Frome, 

 Somerset. From this he exhibited twenty-nine teeth of one of the 

 oldest known Mammals (Microlestes Moorei, Owen, see Pal. Soc. 

 vol. xxiv. 1870. Mon. British Mesozoic Mammals, p. 6, pi. i. figs. 

 1-13), three only having been previously found in so old a stratum 

 (viz. Microlestes anliquus, Plieninger, from the Rhsetic bone bed at 

 Diegerloch, Wurtemberg). Mr. Moore also showed relics of nine 

 genera of reptiles and fifteen genera of fishes, most of which were 

 new to this country. He produced before the meeting 70,000 teeth 

 of LopJiodus, alone, as the result of this labour, and he stated that 

 the hand picking, under a lens, of this three cartloads of clay had 

 probably yielded him one million organic remains. 



Those present will recall the amusing and interesting description 

 he gave of those wonderful nodules from the Upper Lias containing 

 remains of Insects, Crustaceans, Fishes, Reptiles, and Plants ; and 

 how he riveted the attention of his audience by affirming that he 

 could say with certainty that one contained the tail of a Pachycormus, 

 that a second contained a head of a similar fish, a third a perfect 

 fish, another a Cuttle-fish with its cuttle-bone and ink-bag. Then, 

 hammer in hand, Mr. Moore proceeded to open them seriatim, when 

 to the great amusement and delight of the section, the fish previously 

 indicated, and the Cuttle-fish with its dried ink-bag well preserved, 

 were duly discovered and exhibited. Numbers of fossil fishes and 

 perfect specimens of IcJithyosauri and Teleosauri were also exhibited, 

 all collected by Mr. Moore himself. 



Mr. Moore's contributions to science are very numerous, they 

 1 See Geol. Mag. 1864, p. 235. 



