XU PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
abundant harvest of ancient organic forms, and his opportunities for 
procuring specimens of that beautiful fossil, the Apzocrinites Parkin- 
sonit, were so good and frequent, detecting them upon the very layers 
of rock on which they lived, that he was enabled to effect important 
exchanges with collectors in other parts of the British Islands and 
in foreign countries, thereby greatly enriching his museum, so that 
at length i it might be considered one of the finest private collections 
of organic remains in this country 
Besides a communication to the London Geological Journal on the 
Belemnoteuthis, Mr. Chaning Pearce contributed three short papers 
to this Society, one in 1842, on the Mouths of the Ammonites, &c., 
from the Oxfrd clay, Wilts, and two in 1843, the first on the Loco- 
motive powers of the Family Crinoidea, and the second on a new 
Encrinite from the Dudley limestone. 
Finding it necessary to abandon the medical profession, Mr. 
Pearce, in 1845, took Montague House, Lambridge, near Bath, built 
a convenient museum for his extensive collections, and in this placed 
saurian remains only a fortnight before his death. He suffered 
severely from calculi, composed of the phosphate and carbonate of 
lime, which he occasionally expectorated. He expired, with perfect 
calmness, on the 11th of May 1847. 
We have here to deplore the loss, from among our Foreign Mem- 
bers, of one who, during a life extended beyond the ordinary number 
of years, occupied himself with our science and its applications, and 
who for a long period has been ranked among the most distmguished 
geologists. ALEXANDRE BRONGNIART, the son of the well-known 
architect of the Invalides, Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart, was born 
in Parisin 1770. In his early years he was fortunately ‘associated 
with men who could appreciate his talents, and at that important 
period of his life was so situated as to benefit by the conversations of 
Franklm, and obtain his first ideas of chemistry from those of La- 
voisier, and so well did he learn from the latter, and so clear was his 
mode of expressing himself, that it is recorded that when only fifteen 
years of age, Lavoisier himself was the gratified attendant at a chemi- 
cal lecture by the young Brongniart. To chemistry and mimeralogy 
he was always attached, giving courses upon them from the age of 
seventeen years until three years before his death. Few have ex- 
ceeded him in the length of time devoted to instruction. He taught 
for sixty years, and during fifty years was a public professor. 
Alexandre Brongniart early completed his studies at the Ecole 
des Mines at Paris, and in 1788, then only eighteen years of 
age, was one of the founders of the Socicté Philomathique esta- 
blished in that city. In 1790 he visited England, where the mines 
and picturesque beauties of Derbyshire made a strong impression 
upon his mind. It was during this visit that he acquired data for 
a memoir on enamelling, his first appearance in a career connected 
with the manufacture of porcelain, and other fictile substances: 
for which he was afterwards so much distinguished. He became the 
assistant of his uncle, who was demonstrator of chemistry at the 
Jardin des Plantes, and also studied at the Ecole de Médecine, where 
