Ixviii proceedi>:gs of the geological society. [May 1898, 



the ripe age of 82. Fp to quite recently lie had led a very active 

 life, and he retained a vigorous interest in all scientific matters 

 up to the last. He was born in London in 1815 and was the son 

 of the eminent conveyancer and barrister-at-law, the late P. B. Brodie, 

 and nephew of the celebrated surgeon Sir Benjamin C. Brodie, Bart., 

 who was President of the Eoyal Society from 1858 to 1861. 

 • While a youth, and resident with his father at Lincoln's Inn 

 Pields, the younger P. B. Brodie acquired a taste for natural 

 history, and often went as a student to the Eoyal College of 

 Surgeons. Geology in these early years, attracted his attention, 

 to such good effect that he was proposed as a Pellow of the 

 Geological Society of London by William Clift, the Curator of 

 the College of Surgeons, and he was elected so long ago as January, 

 1834, just before he went to Cambridge. At that time he was the 

 youngest Pellow ever admitted. H. E. Strickland, with whom in 

 after years Mr. Brodie was much associated, was elected into the 

 Geological Society towards the end of the same year (1834) and 

 during the presidency of G. B. Greenough. At this time, Buckland 

 and Conybeare, Sedgwick, De la Beche and Eitton, Murchison and 

 Lyell, were ail members of the Council. Mr. Brodie used to relate 

 that he then attended meetings of the Society held in Somerset 

 House, and Estened to many intellectual combats between the 

 geological giants of those days. 



' Educated afterwards at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, he 

 naturally came under the inspiriting influence of Sedgwick. He 

 regularly attended the lectures of the famous Professor, and volun- 

 tarily assisted him in the Woodwardian Museum. Thus Mr. Brodie's 

 early interest in geology was fostered, and he soon began to under- 

 take original work. His first paper, ' Notice on the Occurrence of 

 Land and Ereshwater Shells with Bones of some Extinct Animals 

 in the Gravel near Cambridge,' was read in 1838 before the 

 Cambridge Philosophical Society, but it was not printed until 6 

 years afterwards. Some notes were contributed to this paper by 

 Sedgwick, and it contained the earliest published record of the 

 mollusca from the now celebrated Pleistocene deposit of Barnwell. 



' In 1838 Mr. Brodie was ordained deacon, and the same year he 

 was appointed curate to the rector of Wylye, in Wiltshire. The 

 village is situated on the south-western border of Salisbury Plain, 

 and about 4 miles north of Dinton, in the Yale of Wardour. Here 

 it was that Mr. Brodie became acquainted with that interesting 

 geological region, and his researches added further renown to a 



