Xliv PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



Royal Academy, of which he was a student. He was the author of 

 some speculative letters on Binocular Perspective, published in the 

 Art Journal ; but I am not aware that he contributed any papers to 

 the Journal, or to the Transactions of our Society. He died on the 

 26th October last, at the age of fifty-seven. 



I can only briefly mention the names of other Members of our 

 Society whom we have lost during the past year, and many of whom 

 have done good sendee in the pursuit of geology. We deeply 

 regret the loss of such men as the Rev. Thomas Egerton ; Mr. 

 G. W. Aylmer ; Mr. W. Winterbottom ; Mr. Scobie ; Sir T. Frank- 

 land Lewis, &c. 



The only loss we have sustained amongst our Foreign Associates is 

 that of Dr. Gotthelf Friedrich Fischer deWaldheim, Pro- 

 fessor of Natural History in the University of Moscow. He was born 

 at Waldheim, in Saxony, on the 1 5th October, 17/1, and studied mine- 

 ralogy at Freyberg, with Leopold von Buch and Baron von Humboldt, 

 completing his medical studies at the University of Leipzic. At 

 Paris he subsequently attended the lectures of Cuvier, and care- 

 fully studied the natural-history collections of the French Museum. 

 He had already given evidence of his extensive learning by numerous 

 publications, when, in 1800, he was appointed Professor of Natural 

 History at the Central School of Mayence. On his arrival there, 

 however, he found that the chair had been given to another ; and 

 with that power of adaptation which belongs to true genius, he at once 

 accepted the office of Librarian, which for a time led him away to 

 other studies, particularly typographical antiquities. On this sub- 

 ject he published several valuable works until 1804. But he did 

 not, in the mean time, neglect his favourite pursuit ; he founded at 

 Mayence a Natural History Society, of which he became the Secre- 

 tary, and in 1804 published his * Anatomic der Maki und der ihm 

 verwandten Thiere.' In the same year he was appointed Professor 

 and Director of the Museum of Natural Histoiy at Moscow, where 

 a new field was opened to his talents, in which he laboured with 

 zeal and energy during the remainder of his life. In the year 1805 

 he founded the Society of Naturalists of Moscow, and published the 

 first volume of his ' Description du Museum d'Histoire Naturelle,' 

 the copper-plates of which he engraved with his own hands. This 

 Museum, for the establishment and improvement of which he had 

 so strenuously exerted himself, was destroyed during the conflagra- 

 tion of the city in 1812. Such a calamity would have gone nigh 

 to overwhelm an ordinary man. Dr. Fischer rose above the circum- 

 stances, and with redoubled ardour immediately set to work to 

 replace, as far as possible, the treasures which had been lost. Such 

 were his eiforts, and such was the success with which they were at- 

 tended, that in a very few years the new Museum had again acquired a 

 valuable collection of objects of natural history. He had now begun 

 to direct his attention more exclusively to the study of fossil zoology, 

 or as it is now called. Palaeontology. In the ' Bibliographia Zoologies 

 et Geologise ' of Agassiz, published by the Ray Society, there are no 

 less than 150 notices of separate works and memoirs in journals and 



