142 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



tributed an important paper " On the Oolitic District of Bath," 

 which is published in the third volume of the second series of our 

 * Transactions.' He was not at that time a Fellow of the Society, 

 and the paper was communicated by Dr. Fitton, who has been re- 

 quested by his friend to attend this day as his representative. In 

 1832 the Council, perceiving that the incessant labour and close 

 confinement to which, notwithstanding every remonstrance on their 

 part, he subjected himself in the service of the Society, imposed a 

 duty upon him, the performance of which they hoped might reno- 

 vate his health, by awarding to him the proceeds of the Donation 

 Fund of that year, with a request that he would " in the ensuing 

 summer continue his researches in the oolitic formations, and en- 

 deavour to detect the variations of mineral and zoological characters 

 which mark that series in its range to the north of England." He 

 complied with the request, and in the following December he com- 

 municated his observations in a paper entitled " Report of a Survey 

 of the Oolitic Formations of Gloucestershire." He continued these 

 researches in 1836, when he was again urged to travel for the sake 

 of health ; but although every one else, in all probability, would 

 have found the results of his observations highly valuable, he did 

 not himself consider them sufficiently so to lay them before the So- 

 ciety in any written communication : all that we have obtained of 

 them is a donation he has just made to us of several sheets of the 

 Ordnance Map, on which he has marked his observations during a 

 series of oblique traverses, from the limit of his survey in 1832 to 

 the Humber. His devotion to the affairs of the Society left him 

 little leisure for work in the field, but his mind was always directed 

 to researches in our Museum, especially in departments of palaeon- 

 tology, in which he knew that much was to be done. Many of those 

 who had been working in the field, and submitted to him questions 

 of difficulty in the determination of the fossils they had collected, 

 must remember the valuable assistance he so willingly rendered them. 

 In March 1840 he read a paper to us, which he entitled " Notes on 

 the Age of the Limestones of South Devonshire," containing some 

 new and curious results, the fruit of minute and careful examina- 

 tions of the fossils in these rocks, and constituting a very important 

 part of that body of evidence which led Professor Sedgwick and Sir 

 R. Murchison to propose that division of the Palaeozoic formations, 

 which, adopting their term, we now class as the Devonian system. 



In 1842 the enfeebled state of Mr. Lonsdale's health compelled 

 him to resign the office in the Society, which for thirteen years he 

 had filled with so much honour to himself and advantage to us. He 

 retired to the south of Devonshire, devoting much time to the living 

 corals on that coast ; and some time afterwards removed to Bath, 

 where he now resides. So far as his delicate health will allow, he 

 in his retirement enjoys repose, but not inglorious ease ; for he passes 

 his time in philosophical researches which materially advance the 

 science to which a great part of his active life had been devoted. 

 The investigation of Fossil Polyparia is the subject to which his at- 

 tention has been directed, they having long before been objects of 



