146 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



then appeared in prospect. In 1810 he made a short communica- 

 tion to this Society on the remarkable circumstance of nuts with 

 their shells quite entire, yet filled with calcareous spar, found in a 

 stratum of submarine peat in Belfast Lough; and in 1811, another 

 notice on granite veins penetrating slate in the Mourne mountains 

 in the County of Down. 



Theodore Monticelli of Naples, the Foreign Member whom 

 we have lost, was born in 1759, in the celebrated city of Brundu- 

 sium, the modern Brindisi. He was educated in the Benedictine 

 College at Rome, in which Chiaramonte, afterwards Pius VII., was 

 then a professor, and where he made so much progress in his ma- 

 thematical studies as to be able, while yet a very young man, to de- 

 liver a course of lectures on Natural Philosophy at Naples. In 1792 

 he was elected Professor of Ethics in the University there, but soon 

 after, getting involved in the political troubles of that time, he was 

 thrown into prison, and was confined six years. When he recovered 

 his liberty in 1800 he went to Rome, where he was very kindly re- 

 ceived by his old tutor, by that time raised to the Popedom ; and 

 some years afterwards he was nominated by Napoleon to be em- 

 ployed with others in the re-establishment of the University and 

 Academy of Sciences of Naples, of which latter body he was in 1808 

 elected Perpetual Secretary. 



He about this time directed his attention with great earnestness 

 to the study of Vesuvius, forming a very rich collection of its pro- 

 ducts. He contributed many memoirs to the Academy, in which 

 he described the active volcanic phaenomena, which he watched with 

 unceasing assiduity, their modern products, and those of the earlier 

 history of that celebrated mountain. In 1813 he published an ac- 

 count of a great eruption of that year, which he dedicated to Sir 

 Humphry Davy, with whom he was intimately acquainted ; and 

 Davy, during his residence at Naples some years afterwards, studied 

 the structure and phaenomena of Vesuvius under his guidance. 

 Some years afterwards Monticelli published his ' Storia de' fenomeni 

 osservati nelle eruzioni del Vesuvio,' and in 1825, in conjunction 

 with Covelli, his ' Prodromo della Mineralogia Vesuviana,' which 

 deservedly added to his reputation. In 1827 he was one of a com- 

 mittee appointed by the Academy to draw up a geological descrip- 

 tion of the island of Ischia ; a work which was accomplished, and 

 illustrated by several topographical and geological maps, but which 

 has not yet been published. He also drew up for the Academy a 

 memoir, which was printed in Latin, entitled ' Commentarius in 

 agrum Puteolanum Camposque Flegraeos.' He continued to the last 

 an ardent cultivator of science, and died Secretary of the Academy, 

 having filled the office thirty-seven years. He was alive during the 

 Scientific Congress at Naples last September, but was too infirm to 

 take a part in its proceedings. He was living in retirement at his 

 favourite Pozzuoli, and in the month of October, when a few friends 

 had assembled to celebrate his 87th birthday, he was seized at dinner 

 with apoplexy, which terminated his existence. 



