XXXll PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



the close of the same year his talents as a naturalist and a palaeonto- 

 logist called him to a more extended sphere of action. On the 

 establishment of the Museum of Practical Geology in connection with 

 the Ordnance Geological Survey under the direction of Sir H. De la 

 Beche, Professor Forbes was appointed palaeontologist to that insti- 

 tution, and resigned the curatorship of the museum of this Society. 

 On the removal of the Museum to Jermyn Street he was appointed 

 its Professor of Natural History. 



Here then his talents had full space for their development, and 

 Edward Forbes was not slow in bringing to bear on his numerous 

 avocations the knowledge he had so industriously collected. Com- 

 bining as he did a lively and vivid imagination with a mature and 

 well-disciplined judgment, he was enabled to employ with effect that 

 power of generalization and abstraction which he so eminently pos- 

 sessed. His enlightened and comprehensive views on the numerous 

 branches of natural history which he cultivated, and which were 

 founded mainly on his own experience, caused him from henceforth 

 to be looked up to as one of the first of British naturalists, and the 

 works which he now published bear ample testimony to his well- 

 founded reputation. Nor was it in England alone that his merits 

 were recognized. In France, in Germany, in Italy, wherever men 

 of science were to be found, the name of Edward Forbes was equally 

 acknowledged as deserving a place in the first rank of scientific 

 merit. 



Towards the end of 1846, he published with Lieut., now Captain, 

 Spratt an account of his travels inLycia, a work in which we are at a loss 

 to know whether most to admire the admirable details of archaeology 

 and art, or the equally graphic description of the botany, geology, and 

 zoology which it contains. About this time appeared in the Proceed- 

 ings and Transactions of our Society his Monograph on the South 

 Indian Fossils sent to this country by MM. Kaye and Cunliffe and the 

 Rev. W.H. Egerton. The report itself, independently of the description 

 of the fossils, is short, but it is not the less important, and is eminently 

 characteristic of the author. He points out the general resemblance of 

 the fades of the fossils to that of the Cretaceous period of Europe, and 

 more particularly the lower portions of that series. His arguments are 

 drawn rather from similarity, than from identity of species; a subject 

 to which he had particularly directed his attention during liis re- 

 searches in the iEgean Sea. The report is pre-eminently suggestive, 

 and I would particularly mention that portion of it which refers to 

 the occurrence in these Cretaceous beds of certain forms which are 

 usually considered as characteristic of Tertiary formations, and which 

 very forms are now found in their greatest assemblages living in 

 those eastern seas, — a fact, which, he observes, goes far to support 

 the theory, that genera, like species, have geographical birthplaces as 

 well as geographical capitals. 



About this time, also, he wrote one of the most remarkable contri- 

 butions to the science of Geology whick has appeared in this country. 

 It is published in the first volume of the Memoirs of the Geological 

 Survey of Great Britain, and is entitled " On the Connexion between 



