lxxvi PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [M&y I 9°4» 



geographical than geological, but eventually he was led to turn 

 his attention to the superficial deposits around his home at Ealing 

 which, as that suburb began to grow, were opened up in many 

 places. From this branch of enquiry he hardly diverged up to the 

 close of his life. He succeeded in amassing a valuable collection 

 of stoue-implements, which he arranged with much care and 

 thought. The results of his investigations were from time to time 

 embodied in communications to the Ealing Natural History Society 

 and other societies. But these papers were subsequently incor- 

 porated and enlarged into his work on ' Palaeolithic Man in Xorth- 

 West Middlesex,' by which he will be chiefly remembered. After 

 a long and painful illness he died on September 24th last. He had 

 been admitted into this Society in 1886. 



William Vicary was born at Newton Abbot in 1811. When 

 a young man he went to London to gain further acquaintance 

 with the processes of tanning, his father being a tanner at 

 Xewton. He established himself in the same business at Xorth 

 Tawton, but retired from it many years ago, and thereafter lived at 

 Exeter. Having thus leisure and a competency, he was able to 

 indulge his tastes for scientific enquiry. A keen observer, he 

 spent much of his time in travelling and collecting, and formed 

 a fine assemblage of Devonian fossils which he bequeathed to the 

 British Museum. He called attention to the fossiliferous character 

 of some of the pebbles in the Budleigh-Salterton Pebble-Bed, and 

 presented to this Society a paper on that subject which, with 

 Salter's accompanying description of the fossils, appeared in 1864 

 in the twentieth volume of our Quarterly Journal (p. 283). In the 

 same year he was elected a Fellow of this Society. He took interest 

 also in the rocks and minerals of his native count}', at one time 

 fixing his attention on the igneous masses and at another on the 

 murchisonite-pebbles and boulders in the Triassic conglomerates. 

 For the purpose of aiding his examination of the fossil corals, he 

 obtained a series of recent species. Vicary gave freely of his know- 

 ledge, and helped many geologists in other ways. Although he wrote 

 little, he had wide scientific sympathies. Besides his geological work, 

 he interested himself in meteorological observations and was one of 

 the original contributors to ' British Rainfall,' in the first volume 

 of which, published in 1860, he records a rainfall of 42*17 inches 

 at Exeter. He died at his home in that city on October 22nd last, 

 in his 92nd year. 



