Iviii PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [vol. lxxiv, 



University and by Aberdeen University. In his later years he 

 suffered in health, and lived rather in retirement. He died in his 

 77th year, leaving a widow but no children. 



The death of Robert Bell removes one of the oldest and best- 

 known of Canadian explorers and geologists. His life was passed 

 in the service of the Geological Surve}^ of Canada, which he joined 

 so long ago as 1857, and of which he ultimately became Acting 

 Director. Much of his work was of the pioneer kind, and covered 

 extensive areas about Hudson Bay, Great Slave Lake, and other 

 outlying parts of the Dominion. His early studies at McGill 

 University and at Edinburgh had included medicine as well as 

 natural science, and he was able to act as surgeon as well as geo- 

 logist on exploring expeditions. His interest was mainly, as might 

 be expected, in Archaean and Glacial Geolog} r . Bell became a 

 Fellow of this Society in 1865 and of the Royal Society in 1897. 

 He received the degree of Sc.D. from the University of Cambridge, 

 and was also the recipient of medals from the Royal Geographical 

 Society and the American Geographical Society. He died at 

 Ottawa on June 19th, 1917, aged 76. 



Godfrey Firth Franks was born at Cambridge on July 6th, 

 1853, and was educated at Balliol College, Oxford. In 1879 he 

 went out to Barbados as classical master at Harrison College, and 

 from there was transferred in 1893 to be second master at the 

 ^Queen's College of British Guiana. Soon after his arrival at Bar- 

 bados he had begun to study the fauna of the West Indian coral- 

 reefs, both recent and fossil. He took part also in the fieldwork 

 carried out by the late A. J. Jukes-Browne and Prof. J. B. 

 Harrison on the geology of Barbados, the results of which appeared 

 in a series of papers published by this Society. Soon after he had 

 been elected a Fellow of the Society in 1890, he discovered thick 

 beds of Globigerina Marls at Bissex Hill in Barbados, and in 

 succeeding years worked out the upward succession from these 

 -deep-water deposits through shallower- water f oraminiferal accumu- 

 lations to basal reef-rocks and coral-limestones. A sketch only of 

 these results was published in collaboration with Prof. Harrison in 

 1898. Franks also recognized the same characteristic succession 

 in Trinidad. 



While stationed in Barbados he made a study of the volcanic 

 rocks of the Windward and Leeward Islands, and after his removal 



