44 PEOCEEDIN"GS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



EiCHARD AiETifsox Peacock, formerly of Lancaster and St. Helier's, 

 Jersey, died in London on February 2, 1885, aged 74. A civil en- 

 gineer by profession, lie took a great interest in geology, especially 

 devoting himself to the causes of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, 

 and to the evidence of alterations in the level of the land in historic 

 times. In the former he regarded saturated steam as the motive 

 power, and on this subject he published at least one work. He was 

 the author of a book on the sinking of the north and west coasts of 

 Prance and the south-western coasts of England, published in 1868, 

 and in the year 1 876 read two papers before our Society on sub- 

 sidence in Jersey and Guernsey respectively. It is to be hoped that 

 the latter subject will not cease to attract notice now that we 

 have lost Mr. Peacock, for it is one of much interest. I may, 

 however, remark that for its investigation the acumen of the his- 

 torical critic is even more necessarj^ than the knowledge of the 

 geologist. 



QiriNTiNO Sella, elected a Foreign Member of this Society in 1881, 

 died March 15, 1884. An admirable mineralogist and a sound 

 geologist, a man successful alike in private and in public business, 

 an accomplished statistician, statesman, and Minister of Finance, his 

 death fell heavily on many circles and on many societies. To us he 

 was known as a mineralogist, who, had he devoted himself wholly 

 to that study, would have attained a place among the very foremost of 

 the time ; to another band of Englishmen his name was familiar as 

 the President of the Italian Alpine Club ; to others, again, as the 

 President of the Academy of the Lincei at Eome ; to those without 

 our scientific societies, as the successful Minister of State and the 

 restorer of his country's finances to a comparatively sound condition. 

 Our generation has seen but few men of versatility so great, 

 industry so untiring, and success so varied, few who could have been 

 more widely regretted abroad or more deeply mourned at home. 



Heineich Eobert Goppert, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of IS'atural 

 History in the ITniversity of Breslau, died on May IS, 1884, at the 

 advanced age of 84. He was elected a Foreign Member of our 

 Society in 1857, and in 1883 was awarded the Murchison Medal 

 in recognition of his labours in fossil botany. He was a man of 

 unwearied industry, 245 papers from his pen being recorded in the 

 List of the Poyal Society, the first of them dating from 1828 ; his 

 last work ^ On the Flora of Amber,' a quarto volume, was published 

 at Danzig in 1813, and an advance copy was forwarded to this 

 Society, and laid on the table at the Anniversary meeting, when 

 the Murchison medal was handed to his reiiresentative. In 1846 

 he received from the Academy of Sciences at Haarlem a gold medal 

 and an award in money for his memoir on the Carboniferous Flora. 

 The little band devoted to that most important but rather neglected 

 branch of our science, Palseobotany, will feel that the disappearance 

 from their ranks of Heinrich Robert Goppert is a loss not to be 

 lightly repaired. 



