AlirisriVERSAEY ADDEESS OF THE PEESIDEITT. XXXV 



and Natural History, including Greology, at the Royal Agricultural 

 College at Cirencester. 



He was one of the founders of the Cotteswold Naturalists' Eield 

 Club, and in 1848 was appointed First-class Assistant in the Depart- 

 ment of Geology and Mineralogy in the British Museum. He sub- 

 sequently received the appointment of Examiner for the Council of 

 Military Education, as w^ell as Examiner in Geology to the Uni- 

 versity of London. He was a constant contributor to various 

 scientifxC and literary periodicals, and the pages of our own journal 

 contain many valuable productions from his pen. In 1854 he 

 communicated to this society a highly interesting paper " On the 

 Structure and Affinities of the Hippuritidae," in which many of the 

 peculiar characters of these remarkable fossils were for the first time 

 clearly brought together. With regard to the fossils to which they 

 may be said to bear the closest resemblance, Mr. Woodward showed, 

 while repudiating the doctrine of transmutation, that it might be 

 assumed that the Cretaceous Bippurites are connected with the 

 Oolitic Dicerata and Tertiary CJiamoi. vlfter describing the struc- 

 ture of the Hippurites and other allied genera, of which numerous 

 woodcuts and plates of engravings serve as illustrations, he proceeds 

 to give their affinities. He points out the successive opinions of various 

 palaeontologists, from Parkinson and others, w^ho considered them 

 as Ortlioceratites, to the time when Prof. Quenstedt placed them in a 

 more natural position, between the Chamaceoe and the Cardiadce, 

 The fact of their being bivalves had abeady been satisfactorily 

 established. 



In 1856 he gave us a description of a new OrtJioceras from China, 

 one specimen of which measured 29 inches in length. They, how- 

 ever, occurred only as longitudinal sections in thin plates of lime- 

 stone, artificially worked down for some artistic or domestic purpose, 

 and brought from some place distant 200 miles from Shanghae. 

 Enough, however, of the shell remained to enable Mr. Woodward to 

 describe its structure and to ascertain the series of changes which it 

 had undergone. 



In i860 he assisted Capt. Spratt in naming the recent shells 

 from Bessarabia, as well as the fossil shells from the lower fresh- 

 water deposits of Bessarabia, lists of which are published in our 

 journal of that year. 



He also contributed several papers to the ' Proceedings of the 

 Zoological Society,' to the ' Intellectual Observer,' and to the 

 'Annals of Natural History.' The article on Yolcanos in the 

 * Encyclopaedia Britannica' was written by him ; and for many 

 years he prepared Reports on the Proceedings of the Geological Sec- 

 tion of the British Association. 



But, perhaps, the most important and valuable work which he 

 contributed to science is the ' Manual of Recent and Eossil Shells,' 

 published 1851 to 1856. It is an excellent text-book, and full of 

 original matter. The Supplement, containing a detailed account of 

 the geographical distribution of living MoUusca, as well as of the 

 distribution in time of the fossil species, is deserving of the highest 



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