56 PROCEEDINGS OP THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



of the Linnean and Zoological Societies. The winter of 1889-90 

 was spent by him in Egypt, but the change proved less beneficial 

 than previous sojourns abroad. He determined this last winter to 

 remain at Bournemouth, where, surrounded with his materials, he 

 hoped to do some more useful work for science. But the severe 

 weather told on his already enfeebled constitution, and he was 

 carried off by inflammation of the lungs on the 10th of January last. 



By the death of William Davies, who, after a lingering illness, 

 passed away on the 13th inst., at the age of 77, Vertebrate Palaeon- 

 tology has lost one of its most accomplished students. His retiring 

 disposition, and his devotion for so many years to the ofiicial duties 

 discharged by him at the British lluseum, made his name less 

 familiarly known to geologists than his extensive knowledge and 

 important services would have justified. His published work is of 

 comparatively small extent, but of great merit. He was not 

 ambitious of distinction, for he regarded the acquisition of scientific 

 knowledge and the happiness of communicating it to others as 

 reward enough. As far back as eighteen years ago the Society 

 recognized his merits, and the unselfish readiness with which he 

 placed his almost unrivalled special knowledge at the service of all 

 who sought his help, by conferring on him the first award of the 

 Murchison Medal. 



Handel Cossham was born in 1824. His connexion with 

 mining operations in the Bristol coal-field led him to interest him- 

 self in geology, and in the midst of a busy life he found time to 

 put on record some interesting facts relating to the structure of our 

 Coal-measures. The existence of what we now know as thrust- 

 planes had been previously pointed out by Mr. J. McMurtrie, in what 

 was called the " B-adstock slide-fault," in the southern part of the 

 Bristol coal-field. Mr. Cossham proved that a similar structure 

 occurred in the northern part, where the " Great Yein " and other 

 seams of coal have been disrupted and driven bodily over each other, 

 in a manner which, though almost unique in this country, closely 

 resembles the inversions and dislocations of the Belgian coal-fields. 

 At the time of his death Mr. Cossham had in hand a paper describing 

 further discoveries in regard to this structure. In his later years 

 he sat as member of ' Parliament for Bristol, and devoted much of 

 his time to political questions, on which he was a voluminous 

 pamphleteer. 



