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this island was, some years ago, visited by one of our fellows, the 

 Duke of Buckingham *, who brought home with him a rich collection 

 of its minerals. 



A year has elapsed since Dr. Buckland, owing to his incessant 

 labour in the completion of other geological works, has favoured 

 this Society with any written communications. Still, I have to re- 

 cord from his pen a lively and instructive account of the geological 

 phenomena, observed by Captain Beechy in his late Polar voyage. 

 The existence of the remains of great fossilized mammalia in 

 Escholtz Bay, had been noticed by the Russian navigator, Kotze- 

 bue, who had described them as being commingled in this spot with 

 the bones of quadrupeds now inhabiting those regions. Our skil- 

 ful Vice-President, having specifically described these fossil bones, 

 infers that the animals to which they belonged, lived at an 

 aera antecedent to the creation of existing species, with which they 

 have recently been mixed up in this locality, simply by the falling 

 away of the ancient cliffs in which they were imbedded. The memoir 

 also contains some excellent remarks on the evidence afforded by 

 these fossils, that the former temperature of this high latitude, on the 

 west coast of America, was similar to that which once prevailed in 

 the northern parts of Europe and Asia. 



It is needless, at this period, to expatiate upon the essential va- 

 lue of fossil vegetables in the identification of strata ; or to trace 

 the rise and progress of this branch of our science, from those 

 early days when Scheuchzer published an assemblage of plants 

 from rocks of every age under the chaotic title of Herbarium Dilu* 

 vianum, down to the year 1822; when Count Sternberg gave a 

 new impetus to this study by his Flora cler Vorwelt. The splendid 

 work of the Bohemian nobleman, was followed by attempts of other 

 naturalists to illustrate the fossil plants of their respective districts , 

 among which must be mentioned the English work of Mr. Artis, as 

 explanatory, to a certain extent, of the plants of the Yorkshire coal- 

 field. It is, however, to the more recent efforts of M. Adolphe Bron- 

 gniart, that we owe the general classification of fossil vegetables, 

 founded on their resemblances to existing genera, as well as on their 

 peculiar characters in certain groups of geological formations. You 

 must have read, with instruction and delight, the Prodromus of this 

 author; and there can be no doubt that the continuation of his inter- 

 esting illustrations, will fulfill the hopes geologists so justly entertain. 

 The bright example of the French botanist soon produced its due 

 effects in this country ; and four years have now elapsed since a pro- 

 ject was conceived for the publication of a Fossil Flora of the British 

 Isles, by the union of Mr. Lindley (author of the Introduction to the 

 Natural System of Botany), with Mr. W. Hutton, an active geo- 

 logist, peculiarly fitted for such a task, by his habits of accurate ob- 



* M. Donati, a scientific mineralogist, attached to His Grace's suite, 

 has prepared, in the Italian language, an elaborate and correct description 

 of the mineral structure of this island, but unfortunately it has not yet been 

 translated. 



