480 OUtuarij—Mr. J. Wickham Flower, F.G.S. 



and lie lost no time in communicating his discoveries to others. M. 

 de Verneuil maintained during forty years a continual scientific 

 intercourse with Sir E. Murchison and Mr. Davidson, for whom 

 he continually expressed the most affectionate feelings and friendship. 

 He was a constant attendant at the G-eological Society of France, and 

 rendered that Society the most eminent services. During the last 

 few years of his life his sight was failing him to such an extent that, 

 had he lived a year or two longer, he would, like Lamarck, have been 

 doomed to complete blindness, M. de Verneuil has left a name 

 behind him which will for years be remembered with honour by his 

 numerous geological and pal^ontological friends. — T.D. 



John Wickham Flower, Esq., F.G.S. , of Park Hill, Croydon, 

 descended from a Norfolk family, was born in London on the llth 

 August, 1807. He was educated at a school in Cambridgeshire, 

 where he was well grounded in classical literature, for which he re- 

 tained a strong love and continued to cultivate throughout life. 

 His special tastes led him, however, to the study of Archeeology and 

 Natural History ; and his first savings were spent in an excursion 

 to Winchester, to examine the antiquities of that place and the tomb 

 of William of Wykeham. His attention was early directed to 

 Geology, and he spared neither personal trouble nor expense in 

 enlarging his collections, which were always made as much in the 

 general interests of science, and of his friends, as for himself. He 

 closely explored the interesting Tertiary cliffs of Hampshire, and 

 was instrumental in discovering the fine and unique jaw of an 

 alligator at Hordwell. He collected also largely from the Brick- 

 earth beds of Gi-ays. Nor did he neglect the opportunity offered 

 him by the residence of a friend at Moreton Bay, Australia, to 

 procure a very fine series of the land, freshwater, and marine 

 moUusca of that district, many of which were new to this country. 



But the particular problem which he set himself to work out, on 

 his settling at Croydon some twenty-five years ago, was to ascertain 

 whether the immense pebble-beds of Aldington, belonging to the 

 Lower Tertiary series, were not formed of flints derived from the 

 destruction of higher beds of Chalk than any which now remain in 

 the neighbourhood of London. Stratigraphical Geology has shown 

 that the Chalk formation, as it trends towards the Weald, had been 

 largely planed down before the deposition of the Tertiary Strata, 

 and Mr. Flower's palgeontological researches seemed quite in accord- 

 ance with this view, and to point to the former existence of beds 

 older even than any now remaining in the London Basin, In pur- 

 suance of this object, he carried on for years an examination of the 

 flint pebbles forming the Addington Hills, and broke up many 

 thousands of them in search of the small fossils they occasionally 

 contain.^ Unfortunately the results of this long investigation have 

 never been published. It was, however, evident that they were of 

 a nature to confirm the views he had been originally led to form. 



Another investigation in which he took an active part was that 



1 He also caused a large number of these flint pebbles to be cut and polished, in 

 order to examine the structure of the organisms they contained. — Edit, Geol. Mag. 



