ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS Of THE PRESIDENT. 



37 



THE ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OE THE PRESIDENT. 



Robert Etheridge, Esq., E.R.S. 



In accordance with the usual practice, I must commence my 

 Address with brief Obituary Notices of some of the more promi- 

 nent Eellows and Members of the Society whose loss we have 

 had to deplore since the last Anniversary Meeting. 



Searles Valentine Wood, born Feb. 14, 1798, died Oct. 26, 

 1880. He became a Eellow of the Geological Society in 1839. 



Mr. Wood was born on St. Valentine's day ; hence his name. 

 He went to sea as a midshipman in the ' Thames ' (one of the East- 

 India Company's mercantile fleet) in 1811, and continued in that 

 Service until the year 1826, when, being disappointed in obtaining 

 the command of a ship that had been promised him, he retired 

 from a maritime life and devoted himself to palseontological 

 studies. Settling in his native place in Suffolk, he gave the 

 larger part of his attention to the Crag : but he also collected ex- 

 tensively from the Hampshire Tertiaries ; and for the purpose of 

 working out the relations of these to the beds of the Paris basin, 

 he formed an extensive collection of the Erench Eocene Mollusca. 



Erom these materials, and from correspondence with Deshayes 

 and other Erench savans, he was prepared to have taken up the 

 description of the English Eocene Mollusca long before he actually 

 did so, circumstances having determined his undertaking the de- 

 scription of the Mollusca from the Upper Tertiaries first. He 

 also formed a considerable collection of recent Mollusca for com- 

 parison in working out the relations of the Mollusca from Tertiary 

 formations. Having left Suffolk from ill health, and settled in 

 London, he was in 1837 introduced to Sir Charles (then Mr.) 

 Lyell, and was associated with him in the endeavour in which 

 Lyell was then mainly engaged, to work out a better knowledge of 

 the Tertiary formations, which up to a period not long before that 

 time had been regarded as of small account in comparison with 

 the " Secondary " group. In this task Lyell relied principally on 

 S. V. Wood and the late G. B. Sowerby for the determination of 

 the identity of the Molluscan remains from various countries with 

 those found fossil in England, and with the Molluscan fauna living 

 in existing seas, so far as these were then known. Mr. Wood 

 also, for a few months about this time, acted as Curator of the 

 Museum of the Geological Society. 



Urged to the task by Lyell, he commenced (with the coopera- 

 tion of the present Mr. G. B. Sowerby as engraver and intended 

 publisher) the description of the ' Crag Mollusca ; ' and considerable 

 progress had been made with the manuscript and plates of the 

 first or " Univalve " part of this work, when the Palseontographical 

 Society was formed, in 1847; this part formed the first volume of 

 the magnificent series of scientific publications which have been 



vol. xxxvii. e 



