ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. XXVU 



admired philosopher, left Llandaff to attend the death-bed of his 

 eldest son, and, whilst pausing in his return, at the house of an- 

 other son, was stricken with pulmonary apoplexy, and died on the 

 morning of the 12th of August, after an illness of only three hours, 

 in the 71st year of his age. 



Such is the general picture of the life of a truly estimable man ; and 

 I shall now add to it a very brief notice of his most characteristic 

 works, premising, however, that, even before the peace of 1815 had 

 opened the Continent to British geologists, Mr. Conybeare had formed, 

 from the imperfect data then within his reach, a sound opinion as to 

 the identity of the Jura limestone with the oolitic formations of Eng- 

 land, an anticipation which he had afterwards the gratification, in 

 conjunction with Dr. Buckland and Mr. Greenough, of verifying. 

 The versatility of the genius of Dean Conybeare led him to examine 

 and describe the lesser points connected with organic remains, as well 

 as the greater ; a circumstance in which he strongly resembled his 

 friend and fellow-labourer Dr. Buckland. For an exemplification of 

 this peculiarity of his mind, I shall refer to his paper published 

 in the year 1814, in the second volume of the Transactions of the 

 Society, and therefore one of his early contributions to Palaeonto- 

 logical Science. It was entitled, " On the Origin of a remarkable 

 Class of Organic Impressions occurring in Nodules of Flint." Mr. 

 Parkinson had described them as " small round compressed bodies, 

 not exceeding the eighth of an inch in their longest diameters, and 

 horizontally disposed, connected by processes nearly of the fineness 

 of a hair, which pass from different parts of each of these bodies, 

 and are attached to the surrounding ones ; the whole of these bodies 

 being thus held in connexion." Mr. Parkinson considered that 

 these bodies were the works of polypes, and he therefore classed 

 them with corals of some unknown genera; and Dr. Buckland, 

 who had directed his attention to them simultaneously with Mr. 

 Conybeare, considered that the moulds in which the siliceous casts 

 had been formed were the work of parasitic insects, the thin hair-like 

 appendages having been the passages of entry first made by the in- 

 sects, and the larger flattened bodies the cavities afterwards excavated, 

 the object of the excavation having of course been to obtain nourish- 

 ment from the body thus eaten into, whether a shell or any other. 

 This observation of Dr. Buckland was communicated to Mr. Cony- 

 beare, but not until he had completed his own researches, and arrived 

 at the same virtual conclusion, — namely, that " these cellules were 

 the works of animalcules preying on shells and on the vermes in- 

 habiting them." In arriving at this conclusion, Mr. Conybeare was 

 guided by the examination of various fragments of shells, still pre- 

 served in contact with the siliceous matter which had subsequently 

 been infiltrated into the cavities produced by the boring animal. 

 These appear to have been portions of shells distinguished by a 

 striated texture, and were stated by Mr. Conybeare to resemble in 

 structure the recent Pinna marina, as the genus Inoceramus does; 

 but in addition to these, Mr. Conybeare found them connected with 

 other shells, and even with an Echinus and a Belemnite. Though 



