﻿lvi PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETI. [May I905, 



Stratford- on- Avon in 1823, and remained there until 1879, when 

 he removed to the house at South Littleton in which he died. 

 Although he may have appeared to have lived a somewhat secluded 

 life, it was nevertheless an extremely-active one. The adminis- 

 tration of justice, educational matters, parish and county work, 

 various branches of archaeology, zoology, and geology, all received 

 attention; whilst he was an excellent carver of old oak and an 

 enthusiastic collector of old china — especially Worcester ware. For 

 his researches in connection with the Cheiroptera he was elected a 

 Corresponding Member of the Zoological Society of London, but in 

 the same year directed his attention to fossil corals. 



A considerable number of papers dealing with those organisms 

 were contributed by Mr. Tomes to the Journal of this Society ; and 

 his name will be especially remembered in connection with the once 

 vexed question as to the age of the Sutton Stone of Glamorganshire. 

 He held that ' during the period of the deposition of the Rhsetic 

 Beds no such deposition took place at the locality in question 

 [Bridgend] ' ; an opinion which he re-stated in 1877, and added, 'the 

 Rhgetic fauna of that period became in this manner mixed up with 

 that of the true Lias which was subsequently deposited.' He held 

 this opinion to the end, reiterating it in 1903, when describing in 

 the Journal of this Society the Rhaetic coral Beterastrcea rhcetica 

 from the deposits of contorta-age at Deerhurst (Gloucestershire). 



As his papers in this Journal and the ' Geological Magazine ' 

 testify, his knowledge of corals from the Mesozoic strata was con- 

 siderable, and it is greatly to be regretted that he was not spared 

 to communicate a paper which he was preparing on the revision of 

 certain genera. [L. R.] 



Robert Hakeis Yalpy, whose death took place on December 

 18th, 1904, was born on September 16th, 1819, and was conse- 

 quently in his 86th year. He had been a Fellow of this Society 

 since 1862, and although personally known to but few of our 

 members, he had been an enthusiastic student of geology, and had 

 made a special collection of fossils from the Devonian rocks of the 

 neighbourhood of Ilfracombe. Robert Etheridge, in his classic 

 paper ' On the Physical Structure of West Somerset & North 

 Devon, & on the Palaaontological Yalue of the Devonian Fossils,' 

 published in our Journal in 1867, remarked (p. 605) : 



'No one has more caiefully studied the Ilfracombe group of rocks than 

 R. Yalpy, Esq. ; and to him am I indebted for considerable information 



