lii PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



adherent of science like Casiano de Prado can scarcely be appre- 

 ciated except by those who have visited the Peninsula. Our asso- 

 ciates Mr. Busk and the late Dr. Falconer, little more than two 

 years ago, visited him at Madrid, and were impressed with his many 

 excellent qualities. And it was only last year that my predecessor 

 in this chair, in his annual address, gave an elaborate resume of the 

 chief writings of the Spanish geologist, and concluded with a refer- 

 ence to the difficulties encountered by him in the isolation of his 

 work, and with a quotation of his last words, so applicable to his 

 approaching end : — " I always started from Madrid, with my knap- 

 sack and hammer, cheerful and full of joy ; on my return I never 

 entered its gates without a vague feeling of sadness." 



Jacques Amand Etjdes-Deslongchamps was bom at Caen in 

 Normandy on the 17th of January, 1794. His parents were veiy 

 poor, and imposed upon themselves severe privations in order to 

 ensure to their son a liberal education. The deep sense of duty with 

 which he was imbued enabled him to conduct to a successful issue a 

 series of brilliant studies, so that at a very early age he obtained his 

 first medical degree in his native town. Unfortunately a relentless 

 European war obliged him to become a soldier ; but having already 

 rendered himself conspicuous through his medical studies, at the age 

 of eighteen he received the title of assistant-surgeon to the Imperial 

 Navy, and was on the 28th of October 1812, appointed to the fri- 

 gate * La Gloire.' He was a most skilful operator. In November 

 1815 he became Surgeon Assistant Major to the Military Hospital 

 of Caen, but soon afterwards left the navy and went to Paris to 

 take his degree of Doctor of Surgery. In May 1822 he was elected 

 Surgeon to the Board of Relief of the town of Caen ; and the number 

 of poor that followed his funeral, as weU as of the wealthier classes, 

 is a proof of the high esteem in which his arduous services were 

 held ; indeed his noble mind was wholly bent on doing good and 

 affording relief and encouragement to those who were in need 

 of his aid or advice. 



During his sojourn in Paris, however, medicine was not his only 

 study; for comparative anatomy, botany, and physiology had oc- 

 cupied much of his attention ; and in these sciences he made himself 

 eminently proficient, as well as in the art of drawing. At that 

 period the gypsum-quarries of Montmartre were disclosing to the 

 genius of Cuvier a multitude of extinct mammalian remains ; and 

 these wonderful discoveries had so forcibly struck the ardent young 

 naturalist, that on his return to Caen he lost no time in exploring 

 the quarries in its neighbourhood. Great indeed was his surprise 

 to find them replete with fossil remains of all kinds ; and the dis- 

 covery of a specimen of Teleosaurus Oadomensis so elated him that 

 from that time comparative anatomy and palaeontology became one of 

 the chief pursuits of his long and well-employed life. So important 

 and varied were his researches and pubhcations that he was univer- 

 sally recognized as one of the most eminent palaeontologists of his 

 day. With Cuvier, E. Geoffrey St. Hilaire, Humboldt, and other 



