ANNrVEKSAEY ADDEESS OF THE PEESIDENT. XXXI 



At the age of nineteen he became a partner in his father's 

 business, and came to England in 1804. At the age of twenty- 

 one he married Miss Lloyd, and settled in London. His brother 

 Francis had by this time established his position in the House 

 of Commons, and was looked upon as one of the rising men of 

 his party ; he was thus at once received into the society of the 

 scientific and literary men of the day, and continued his devo- 

 tion to science. His favourite pursuits, however, were Miner- 

 alogy and Greology, and in those days geology was more closely 

 associated with mineralogy than at present; for palaeontology had 

 not then made such rapid strides and given such impulse and 

 direction to geological investigations as it has done within the 

 last half century. We have only to look at the papers published 

 in the volumes of the first series of our ' Transactions ' for a 

 proof of this statement. They are chiefly purely mineralogical 

 or chemical; and although some descriptions of stratigraphical 

 arrangements are given, scarcely an allusion is made to the 

 organic contents of the strata, either in the text or in the illus- 

 trations which accompany them. 



It was an auspicious moment when Mr. Horner settled in 

 London; for in the following year (1807), notwithstanding the 

 opposition of the then President of the Royal Society, Sir Joseph 

 Banks, and other influential Members, the Greological Society of 

 London was founded, chiefly through the strenuous exertions of 

 Mr. Grreenough, to which I have alluded on a former occasion. 

 In the following year (1808) Mr. Horner became a Fellow, since 

 which period the progress of Greology and the prosperity of our 

 Society have always claimed his most zealous attention, and were 

 amongst the principal objects of his life. In 1810 Mr. Hornei? 

 was elected one of the Secretaries of the Society, and in 1811, 

 while his brother Francis, who, although in Parliament, must have 

 shared his tastes for scientific pursuits, was one of the Trustees 

 of the Society, he read his first paper " On the Miueralogy of 

 the Malvern Hills*." In this paper Mr. Horner first describes 

 the general physical features of the Hills, in the course of which 

 he suggests hints to geologists, which, peculiarly applicable as 

 they then were, are not altogether unworthy of notice in the 

 present day. After alluding to the difficulty, not to say the 

 impossibility, of giving names to the many varieties of granitic 

 and syenitic rocks met with in the Malvern Hills, he adds, 

 " But in the present state of geological science, and more espe- 

 cially when the great imperfection of the nomenclature of rocks 

 is considered, it would be well if geologists made a practice of 

 describing the simple minerals of which a rock is composed, 

 whenever they can be distinguished, instead of giving specific 

 names, without any explanation of the nature of the compounds 

 to which their terms are applied, and particidarly those in which 

 theory is involved." He then describes the general structure 



* Geol. Trans, vol. i. 1st ser. p. 281. 



