297 
of Edinburgh^ Session 1864 - 65 . 
and his works. The results were given to the Eoyal Society in 
1855. The experiments thus instituted in the hope of obtaining an 
accurate chronometric scale for testing the age of a given thickness 
of Nile sediment, are not considered by experienced Egyptologists 
to be satisfactory. 
After acting for thirty years as Inspector of Factories, he re- 
signed his office, and devoted his attention principally to geology, 
classifying and arranging with great patience, perseverance, and 
skill, the foreign collection of the G-eological Society in Somerset 
House. In 1861 he visited Italy, and resided for eight months at 
Florence. There he met with a sad bereavement in the death of 
Mrs Horner, his companion for fifty-six years. She was a most 
attractive lady, with a highly cultivated mind. From the shock 
of this event Horner never recovered completely, and it threw a 
shade over his declining years. When at Florence he translated 
with happy fidelity Villari’s “ Life of Savonarola,” which he after- 
wards published with notes. He continued to work to the end, 
and he died on 5th March 1864, at 60 Montagu Square, London, 
at the age of seventy-nine. 
A correspondent in America saj^s of Horner — ‘‘Among us in 
the United States not a few knew and valued him as the biographer 
of his brother, Francis Horner, a statesman whose early death is 
still to be counted among the misfortunes of his country, and whose 
life, republished here in 1853, has served to join and strengthen 
the principle of many an aspiring young jurist in the United States, 
as it has in England, from its first appearance there. Others on 
our side of the Atlantic have known Mr Horner as a naturalist, 
who was at one time President of the G-eological Society, and who 
contributed many valuable papers to its ‘ Transactions.’ Others 
again have known him personally as the father of Lady Lyell, to 
whom and her eminent husband so many Americans became at- 
tached during their visit to the United States, and who were always 
proud to present to their distinguished father the friends from 
abroad who visited them in London.” It has been well remarked, 
that Mr Horner was one of the living links which bound the pre- 
sent race of geologists to the fathers and founders of British geo- 
logy. His recollections went back to the latter part of last century, 
and he used to tell anecdotes of the days of Hutton, and Playfair, 
