XXXIV PEOCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



for the purpose of giving a higher classical education to the sons 

 of gentlemen and of the middle classes in Edinburgh, ^his 

 Academy still flourishes, and to the last year of his life Mr. 

 Horner was engaged in schemes for its improvement, and for the 

 reform of its origiual construction. 



But though absent from London, Mr. Horner was not forgotten 

 there. The interest he had taken in Edinburgh in promoting 

 various plans for the advancement of knowledge and the improve- 

 ment of education was fully appreciated ; for in 1827 he was 

 invited to London to take the office of "Warden in the London 

 University, which had then been but recently founded. But the 

 duties of this office, great as they must have been during the first 

 years of the existence of this institution, did not distract Mr. 

 Horner's thoughts from his old associations; he was elected a 

 Member of the Council of this Society in 1828, on the very 

 first Anniversary after his return to London, and was chosen as 

 one of the Vice-Presidents in 1829. After a few years, however, 

 he found the duties of Warden too much for his health, and he 

 resigned the office in 1831. He then went abroad with his family, 

 jand fixing his residence at Bonn, on the lihine, again devoted 

 himself to his favourite pursuit of mineralogy ; here he had 

 ample opportunities of studying the phenomena of igneous and 

 eruptive rocks in the classic region of the Siebengebirge and the 

 Drachenfels, whilst cultivating the friendship of many literary and 

 scientific men, who were collected together under the auspices 

 and by the attractions of a flourishing Grerman University. The 

 names of Schlegel, Groldfuss,Mitscherlich, ]N'oggerath,andBrandis, 

 with whom he ever afterwards kept up most intimate relation- 

 ship, will give some idea of the intellectual society afl'orded by 

 the place where he had fixed his residence. 



Li 1833 Mr. Horner returned to England. On the 13th of March 

 he laid before the Society the results of his observations while 

 abroad, in a paper entitled " Greology of the Environs of Bonn*." 

 In this paper Mr. Horner gives a full and minute account of 

 the various trachytic rocks which, with numerous modifications, 

 constitute the chief portion of the Siebengebirge, as well as of 

 the basaltic rocks, in many places columnar, which have burst 

 out in the neighbourhood, apparently at a more recent period. 

 The lowest sedimentary rock described is called Grrauwacke. It 

 is now known to belong to the Devonian system; but though 

 this classification was not then understood, Mr. Horner correctly 

 recognized many beds as resembling the Old Eed Sandstone of 

 Herefordshire and Shropshire, and came to the conclusion that 

 it probably " belonged to the later periods of the Grrauwacke 

 deposit.'" None of the Secondary strata occur here, and the 

 grauwacke is covered unconformably by deposits of the Tertiary 

 period, which constitute a brown-coal formation, and this again 

 is overlain Jby beds of gravel and loess. But I must refer you to 



* Trans. GeoL Soc. vol. iv. 2nd.ser. p. 433. .. 



