Hi pkoceeui^gs or the geological society. [May 1907,. 



upon the President at our Anniversary to record the losses "which 

 the Society and geology at large have sustained during the past 

 twelve months from the thinning of our ranks hy death. 



By the death of Eugene Bexeviee, the Society loses one of its 

 most esteemed Foreign Members, and geology one of the veterans 

 of last century who notably contributed to the advancement of the 

 science. Born at Lausanne on March 25th, 1831, he remained not 

 only true to his country but faithful also to his native city, for it 

 was there that he spent a long, active, and honoured life, which 

 was sadly and suddenly closed by a fatal accident on the 4th of 

 last May. 



After his earty education in Switzerland, Benevier was boarded 

 by his father at Stuttgart, where he attended the Polytechnic 

 School, and where he received the impulse towards scientific 

 pursuits which soon became the paramount interest of his career. 

 He had already begun to collect minerals, and he now made the 

 acquaintance of his fellow-student Oppel, who, as an earnest of his 

 future distinction in palasontological research, was already in the 

 habit of gathering fossils. The two young naturalists made ex- 

 changes of their little duplicates, and doubtless by their influence 

 on each other determined their respective vocations in life. There 

 appears at least to be little doubt that, when he left Stuttgart, 

 Benevier's bent towards science was already so strong as to over- 

 master every other tendency. In 1848, when only 17 years old, he 

 climbed among the cliffs of the Diablerets in search of fossils. He 

 seems to have remained about three years at Stuttgart. At the 

 end of that time, and before he was twenty, he felt himself strong 

 enough to venture into the arena of geological authorship by com- 

 municating his first scientific paper to the Societe Yaudoise des 

 Sciences Xaturelles. In this maiden effort, which was an attempt 

 to determine the place of the freshwater molasse in the series of 

 the Tertiary formations, and also in his other early writings, he 

 struck what proved to be the keynote of all his scientific energies, 

 which was a combination of stratigraphical and palgeontological 

 research directed towards the determination of the true order and 

 succession of the stratified rocks. This intimate combination was 

 employed by him with the object of tracing out the history of 

 geographical change and the progress of organic life, in the first 

 instance upon the site of his own beloved Switzerland, and then 

 over the whole surface of the globe. 



