879 



appear in the Transactions of the Royal Society ; the first is en- 

 titled " Experiments to ascertain the Influence of the Spinal Marrow 

 on the action of the Heart in Fishes," and is printed in the 105th 

 volume of the Philosophical Transactions in the year 1815 ; the 

 second and last contribution to the Royal Society was his " Descrip- 

 tion of some Fossil Bones found in the Caverns at Oreston," printed 

 in the volume for the year 1823. 



Both papers are characterized by the clearness and simplicity of 

 the style in which the facts and experiments are narrated, and by 

 the soundness of the conclusions deduced from them. 



By the judicious choice of the subject of his experiments, and the 

 care and skill with which they were performed, Mr. Clift, in the 

 first of these papers, established, in contravention of the conclusions 

 to which M. Le Gallois had arrived, that the action of the heart con- 

 tinues long after the brain and spinal marrow are destroyed, and still 

 longer when the brain is removed without previous injury to its sub- 

 stance ; together with some interesting collateral conclusions. 



Soon after the publication of these memoirs, Mr. Clift was elected 

 a Fellow of the Royal Society, and served on the Council of the So- 

 ciety in the years 1833 and 1834. He communicated some memoirs 

 to the Geological Society, two of which, " On the Fossil Remains 

 from the Irawaddi " and " On the Megatherium," are published in 

 the Transactions of that body. Most of the works or memoirs, how- 

 ever, on the fossil remains of the higher classes of animals, which 

 have appeared since Sir Everard Homeis first paper on the Proteo- 

 saurus, in the Transactions of the Royal Society for 1814, until 

 within a recent period, are more or less indebted to Mr. Clift, either 

 for his determination of the fossils described in them, or for his accu- 

 rate and beautiful figures of them. Numerous and hearty are the 

 acknowledgements by their respective authors to Mr. Clift for this 

 valuable assistance. In Dr. Mantell's original memoir on the Iguano- 

 don, published in our Transactions in 1825, the author says, '* Among 

 the specimens lately collected, some, however, were so perfect, that 

 I resolved to avail myself of the obliging oiFer of Mr. Clift, to whose 

 kindness and liberality I. hold myself particularly indebted, to assist 

 me in comparing the fossil teeth with those of the recent Lacertse 

 in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. The result of 

 this examination proved highly satisfactory-, for in an Iguana we dis- 

 covered teeth possessing the form and structure of the fossil speci- 

 mens." And Baron Cuvier, in the concluding volume of his great 

 work on Fossil Remains, acknowledges his obligations for many 

 drawings, " faites par M. Clift, dont le beau talent a enrichi ce recueil 

 de tant de planches non moins remarquables par leur execution que 

 par leur fidelite." 



To return, however, to the more im^mediate field of Mr. Clift's 

 labours, I find it recorded in the edition of the Synopsis of the Mu- 

 seum of the Royal College of Surgeons, published by the Council in 

 1845, that, " under Mr. Clift's superintendence the removal of the 

 Collection from Castle-street, Leicester-square, to a temporary place 

 of deposit in Lincoln's Inn Fields, in 1806, and thence to the Mu- 

 seum of the College in 1813, was effected without the slightest 



