6o 



PKOCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



He was elected a Foreign Member of this Society in 1859, and 

 received the Murchison Medal in 1885. It was intended to cele- 

 brate on the 10th of next May the fiftieth anniversary of his 

 doctorate, and many of the Pellows of this Society have doubtless 

 received the invitation, signed by illustrious geologists and palae- 

 ontologists all over the Continent, to take part in the testimonial 

 which it was proposed to found in his honour. But he has been 

 removed from his labours and triumphs by the hand of Death before 

 this festival could be held. He died on the 14th of December, 1891. 



Baron Achille de Zigno, who died on January 15th last, at the age 

 of 79, was elected a Foreign Correspondent of this Society in 1886. 

 His earliest publications were mainly stratigrai3hical, the first, on 

 the sedimentary rocks of Trevigiano, being published in 1841. 

 He soon, however, turned his attention expressly to palaeontology, 

 and wrote on various divisions of the animal kingdom. Botany was 

 always a favourite study with him, and he published numerous 

 papers on fossil plants. His most important work — ' Flora ?ossilis 

 Formationis Oolithicae' — is a general monograph of the Oolitic 

 Flora, the first part of which was issued in 1856, the latest in 1885. 

 With this exception and also his ' Introduzione alio Studio della 

 Geologia' (1843), his writings deal chiefly with the rocks and 

 fossils of Venetia and the adjacent districts. His contributiors to 

 our Journal treat of the stratified Formations of the Venetian Alps 

 (vol. vi. 1850), and the Oolitic Flora (vol. xvi, 1860). A brief paper 

 communicated to the Geological Society of France in 1853 compared 

 the flora of Scarborough with that of the Oolitic rocks m tie 

 Venetian Alps. , 



In the Address which it was my privilege to lay before you at ar 

 last Anniversary, I gave a sketch of the history of volcanic actin 

 within the area of the British Isles during the vast intervabf 

 geological time represented by the succession of rocks from eaiy 

 pre-Cambrian formations to the top of the Silurian system. 



I propose now to take up the narrative at the point where I tbn 

 left it, and to trace, though necessarily again only in broadest ot- 

 line, what seem to me to have been the salient features of volcaic 

 action in this region from the end of the Silurian period dowirto 

 older Tertiary time, when the last British volcanoes becaie 

 extinct. j 



