XXXVl PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



With all these occupations Sir David found time to invent one of 

 the prettiest of toys, the Kaleidoscope ; to write one of the most 

 charming of popular scientific treatises, the ' Letters on Natural 

 Magic ; ' and to enter into a considerable number of controversies, 

 in which he displayed such a capacity for the outpouring of copious 

 wrath, that his adversaries must have found it difficult to believe 

 that he had anything else to do but to assail them. But this mar- 

 vellous energy was never directed to geological problems. Sir 

 David was familiar with minerals, but he regarded them with the 

 eye of a student of optics ; and even his discovery of the cavities in 

 crystals and of their contents did not cause him to diverge from 

 his favourite line of study. Once, indeed, he plunged into cosmo- 

 logy ; but ' More "Worlds than One ' hardly added to the renown 

 which he had justly obtained as an unwearied observer and accu-' 

 mulator of facts in optics. 



Dr. Eugene Feanceort, Commendatore of the Order of St, Maurice 

 and St. Lazarus, whose sudden decease took place at Pallanza, on the 

 22nd September 1868, had for some years directed the application 

 of EngHsh capital to the working of numerous mines near the Lago 

 Maggiore and in the Val Anzasca. He had in early life worked at 

 chemistry and geology in the United States, and when established in 

 Italy exhibited such enthusiasm in the pursuit of mineralogy as 

 secured him the friendship of many scientific men of eminence in 

 that country. His liberality, a rare virtue among collectors, will not 

 soon be forgotten by the friends who lament his untimely end. 



Dr. Henry Porter was born July 13th, 1832, at Peterborough, 

 in which town his father practised as a surgeon. He received his 

 primary education at the Hereford school under the Eev. Henry 

 Manton, and while yet a school-boy, his interest in Geology having 

 been awakened by the perusal of one of Dr. Mantell's works, he 

 became an enthusiastic collector and student of fossils. On leaving 

 school he spent three years in his father's surgery, and then passed 

 to Queen's College, Eirmingham, where he greatly distinguished 

 himself, obtaining a scholarship, two gold medals, and other honours, 

 and becoming at the end of his three years' course of study Warn- 

 ford's Prize-man. On leaving Birmingham, he continued his studies 

 in London and Paris. 



Returning to his native town. Dr. Porter entered on the practice 

 of his profession, devoting his leisure hours to the study of the 

 geology of the district and the formation of a collection of fossils. In 

 1861 he became a Fellow of this Society, and in the same year pub- 

 lished his ' Geology of Peterborough.' This unpretentious but useful 

 little work is an attempt to give in popular language such a sketch 

 of the Geology of a limited district as may be calculated to awaken 

 in residents an interest in our science, and, by furnishing the neces- 

 sary basis of information, lead the way to further researches. In 

 1863 Dr. Porter contributed a paper to this Society " On the oc- 

 currence of large quantities of Fossil Wood in the Oxford Clay, near 



