36 NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF JDUHLIK. 



brought to light the fact of the occurrence of Annelidan tracks, and the 

 burrows of sea worms in connexion with the Sertularian remains which 

 we have just described. In one instance he discovered the curved bar- 

 row of the worm, with its funnel-shaped orifice beautifully indented by 

 the impression of the radiating tentacula of the animal, and this in a 

 bed of hard greenish close-grained grit, as unlikely a looking rock in 

 which to find a fossil as it was possible to imagine. We have an account 

 and illustration of this most singularly interesting Annelid in the " Jour- 

 nal of the Geological Society of Dublin," vol. vii., p. 184, plate V., and 

 the following brief notice of this discovery in the Royal Irish Academy 

 Museum, before alluded to. He then says : — " The beds in which the 

 fossils of both species occur ( 0. antiqua and radiata) are remarkable for 

 being permeated by those long rounded fossils to which I drew atten- 

 tion in a paper read before the Geological Society of Dublin, in Novem- 

 ber 6th, 1856, and subsequently described more in full in a communi- 

 cation laid before Section C, British Association, September, 1857, and 

 then proved to have been the tracks of wandering worms, and also of 

 worms of a type probably allied to the common Arenicola pi&catorum. 

 The openings of the burrows of three of this latter type are figured in 

 Fig. 6 (Royal Irish Academy Museum, page 555). These annelidan 

 tracks generally are most abundant in the beds above the layers of Old- 

 hamia, and sometimes passing from the beds beneath them to the bed 

 above, they afford a strong proof of the former organic nature of these 

 fossils, as the worms which formed them probably derived a great por- 

 tion of their nourishment from these decomposing zoophytes" ("Royal 

 Irish Academy Transactions," vol. xxiii., p. 555). 



Though this memoir, and that relating to the Arenicola-remains in 

 the Cambrian rocks, are short, they are the result of years of patient 

 search and accurate thought ; and the truths which they disclose, as 

 throwing light on the climatal and other conditions of this portion of the 

 earth during the early and least-known period of its palseozoic histoiy, 

 are invaluable. 



What Dr. Kinahan has done for geology makes no great show. It 

 is devoid of the gold leaf and tinsel which so frequently decorate the 

 hurried or shallow productions of many professing geologists; but it 

 is the one solid corner foundation-stone on which will yet be built a 

 superstructure dedicated to the history of the first life-remains of the 

 globe. 



John Robert Kinahan, M. D., was a member of the Royal Irish Aca- 

 demy, Fellow of the Linnsean Society, and member of several other 

 learned societies, and Professor of Zoology, Department of Science and 

 Art. The enthusiasm and zeal which inspired his lectures in all the 

 branches of Zoology will long be remembered ; and it is to be hoped that 

 a Professorship so important and so necessary in this country to meet 

 the growing tastes of numbers interested in those studies, will be main- 

 tained by a successor who will enter the field with at least an equal de- 

 sire to promote the advancement of so useful and so valuable a science. 



Having thus though but briefly touched upon some of the more im- 



