1 PROCEEDINGS or THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



out Europe for the zeal with which he made his researches and 

 collected minerals ; and he enjoyed great facilities from the high 

 official position with reference to the mines which he for many years 

 held under the Eussian Government. 



In Professor Adolf Nils Ton Nordenskiold, of Stockholm, our de- 

 ceased Foreign Member has left a son devoted to the same pursuits. 



Dr. Charles Th£ophile Gaudin was born in Augiist 1822, at 

 Lausanne, and received his education at the schools and academy of 

 that town. In 1845 he came over to England, and passed several 

 years here as tutor in the family of Lord Shaftesbury. A serious 

 illness in 1851 obliged him to return to his father's home, and for a 

 period of two years he devoted himself to a scientific examination of 

 the neighbourhood. It was then that, in company with Dr. De la 

 Harpe, he discovered the numerous Eocene animal remains, which 

 Pictet afterwards described, and that he commenced the search for 

 fossil plants near Lausanne and Yevey, which has been the means 

 of bringing to notice so many new species. 



Two winters after this he passed in Italy, with Madame von E., 

 and her son, working vigorously at his favourite subject ; and in the 

 numerous contributions which he made from 1858 to 1862 to the 

 Swiss Natural History Society, he showed that in Tuscany there 

 exist an Upper Miocene, a Pliocene, and a Quaternary flora. 



It was in consequence of a journey to England in 1860 that Ma- 

 dame von E. purchased a house at Lausanne, and commissioned 

 Gaudin to arrange in it collections to illustrate arts and manufac- 

 tures. It was a task which closely occupied him for years, and 

 which remains a fine monument of his persevering industry. 



Passing the winter of 1862 and 1863 at Palermo, he discovered 

 in his excursions to the interior of Sicily a bed of Upper Miocene 

 plants near Yillafratre, and found a tooth of the dwarf elephant {El, 

 Melitensis), which he transmitted to Dr. Falconer. On the way 

 home, at Naples, he was attacked by fever, which greatly reduced 

 him, and it soon became apparent that his lungs were afiected. Yet 

 he was able in the next winter, at Mentone, to work at the geology 

 of the district, and to bring out, with Professor Yalhemont, a little 

 work, entitled * Menton, son climat, sa geologic, et ses grottes.' But 

 his disorder was constantly increasing, and he returned to his 

 father's house only to pine away. He died on the 7th January, 1866. 



Gaudin's contributions to science are mostly published in the 

 ' Denkschriften der Schweizer naturforschenden Gesellschaft' and 

 in the ' Bulletin de la Soc. Yaud. des Sciences Naturelles ;' and they 

 may be regarded as the work of an excellent man, whose disin- 

 terested love of science is seldom equalled. He was elected a 

 Foreign Correspondent of this Society in 1863. 



By the death of Seiior Doif Casiano de Prado our foreign list 

 loses an able representative of the Spanish peninsula, and his coun- 

 try has to mourn the sudden removal of one of the few among her 

 sons who have known how to combine the constant routine func- 



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