ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OP THE PRESIDENT. XXXVll 



Eichwald had first called the attention of geologists. In 1827 he 

 resigned his appointment and withdrew to his paternal property 

 of Zarnikau in Livonia. But even here he could not resist the 

 attractions of natural history. The sandy soil of Livonia contains 

 numerous remains of the scales and teeth of animals of a very early 

 period, of which the determination was most difficult. Pander col- 

 lected great quantities of these teeth and other fragments, and was 

 the first to recognize that they must have belonged to lost species of 

 cartilaginous fishes. But the difficulties of the position in which he 

 was placed, in a district where the pubhcation of his plates was 

 almost impossible, and where his only object was the satisfaction of 

 his own scientific inclinations, led to his being anticipated by Sir E. 

 Murchison in making known the character of this Devonian forma- 

 tion with its cartilaginous fishes. 



In 1842 he was appointed to the School of Mines and settled in 

 St. Petersburg, whence he carried out several geological ex- 

 peditions in Livonia, Esthonia, Central Russia, and in the Ural, the 

 chief object of which was to study the palaeontological character of 

 the older formations, and to select the best spots for establishing 

 experimental works for coal after fixing the geological horizon 

 of the coal-beds of Russia. We are also indebted to Pander for 

 the important and practical explanations respecting the beds and 

 contents of the Ural coal-field. He died on the f~^ September, 1865, 

 after long suffering from a painful disorder. He will be long re- 

 gretted as one of the truest of friends and most simple-minded and 

 unselfish of scientific men. Science was to him the love of his heart, 

 and he never could be induced to use it for the furtherance or im- 

 provement of his own position. 



Karl von Ratjmer was born at Worlitz, near Dessau, on the 9th 

 April, 1783. In 1797 he attended the Joachimsthal Gymnasium 

 in Berlin, and was at this early age distinguished for his love of 

 art and poetry as well as science. In 1801 he commenced his 

 academical career at Gottingen, where, contrary to his own inclina- 

 tions, he devoted himself to his legal studies. At the same time 

 he attended Blumenbach's lectures, and became a great proficient in 

 music. He worked and read hard, and his education was at this 

 time literary rather than scientific. In 1803 he removed to 

 Halle. Here he remained a year longer than the parental pro- 

 gramme had originally contemplated, for the purpose of attending the 

 lectures of Prof. Steffens. This first awoke his love for natural 

 history, which subsequently became the ruling passion of his life. 

 Deeply interested by Steffens's lectures on the internal history of 

 the earth (this was in 1805), he was greatly excited by the grand 

 idea therein developed, that the earth also had its history. He now 

 learnt, for the first time, that Werner had founded his history 

 of the development of the earth on his observations on existing 

 mountain forms. In 1805 he went to Freiberg to attend Werner's 

 lectures, where the great naturalist gradually weaned him from his 

 philosophical and historical inclinations to the earnest and engros- 



