ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. XXVll 



are aware, been recently published, forming the third part of the 

 seventh volume of our ' Transactions.' Professor Forbes tells us 

 that the collection is in every point of view of the highest interest, 

 and that the fossils are as beautiful as they are interesting. The 

 total number of species of Invertebrata is 178, of which 165 are Mol- 

 lusca, 2 Ariiculata, 8 Echinodermata, and $ Zoophytes, the greater 

 proportion being from Pondicherry, or, more properly speaking, 

 from South Arcot, being more within the English than the French 

 territory. The evidence afforded by these fossils as to the age of 

 the beds in which they are contained, makes it clear that they are 

 cretaceous ; that in two of the localities in which they were found 

 the beds are equivalent to the Upper Greensand and Gault, and in 

 the other to the lowest division of the cretaceous system in Europe. 

 We are thus indebted to Mr. Kaye for some additional precise and 

 valuable information respecting fossiliferous deposits in Southern 

 India, the great importance of which in a geological point of view 

 must be allowed, when we consider the comparatively limited extent 

 of our knowledge respecting the distribution of animal life in the 

 seas of the tropics during the secondary period. We know little 

 more than what we have learned from the valuable memoir of Cap- 

 tain Grant on the district of Cutch, published in the fifth volume of 

 our ' Transactions,' and from these researches of Mr. Kaye. Although 

 unpracticed in geological investigations, he undertook to follow out 

 the hints afforded by Captain Newbold, and overcame all difficul- 

 ties, through his sagacity and ardent love of science. His collec- 

 tions in our Museum are a monument of his zeal. During his stay 

 in England he neglected no opportunity of getting together what- 

 ever information was likely to aid him in the prosecution of his 

 researches. He returned to India in October 184-5, prepared to 

 investigate the interesting district upon the structure of which he 

 had already thrown so much light ; but he was shortly afterwards 

 attacked by a disease which terminated his existence in July last, in 

 the S'ith year of his age. 



I have now to advert to the decease during the past year of one 

 of our Foreign Members, George Gottlieb Pusch. He was a 

 German by birth, but entered, about the year 1816, into the Impe- 

 rial mining service of Russia, in the kingdom of Poland. The pre- 

 face to the first volume of his work, entitled a ' Geognostical descrip- 

 tion of Poland and the Northern Carpathians,' is dated Warsaw, 

 1829 ; and in this M. Pusch modestly explains the object he had in 

 view, after ten years of assiduous personal researches. We who are 

 surrounded by many facilities and terms of comparison, may well 

 admire the courage with which a solitary miner, living among the 

 hills of the Mittelgebirge, between Warsaw and Cracow, should 

 have ventured to grapple with the herculean task of putting toge- 

 ther the geological description of a kingdom, which should embrace 

 every variety of its deposits and rocks, from the oldest transition 

 formations to the most recent alluvia. With scarcely any valid land- 

 marks to guide him, as established by preceding geologists, M. Pusch 



