SCIENTIFIC SUMMARY. 
321 
Palaeontographical Society (March. 31) this year, the council of that society 
presented to Mr. Davidson a copy of his magnificent work on British Fossil 
Brachiopoda, handsomely hound, as a small expression of their high esti- 
mation of his valuable and protracted labours for the promotion of the 
objects of the Society. 
The Wollaston Medal and Fund. — The Wollaston medal has this year 
been presented to Professor Bamsay, who acknowledged the compliment in 
a very humble address. Professor Bamsay well deserves the medal, and 
ought, we think, to have got it earlier. The proceeds of the Wollaston 
Fund were awarded to Mr. Etheridge, to enable him to prosecute his 
valuable work on the Fossils of the British Islands. Mr. Etheridge has 
been on this work for eight years, and the work itself occupies nine volumes 
of manuscript. We hope this splendid work may be soon completed and 
offered to the public. 
The Palceontographical Society has issued its yearly volume for 1870. It 
contains several most important works, and among them one by Professor 
Owen, who concludes the volume with a monograph on the Fossil Mammals 
of the Mesozoic Bocks, the materials for which he has long been accumu- 
lating, and the interest in which has by no means abated. The first pages 
of this work are devoted to a consideration of the Bhsetic Mammals of the 
genus Microlestes , in which the author places the detached tooth of Hypsi- 
primnopsis rhceticus , discovered by Mr. Boyd-Dawkins at Watchet, Somerset, 
and also the remarkably rich series of detached teeth discovered by Mr. 
Charles Moore, F.G.S., of Bath, in a fissure of the Mountain Limestone at 
Holwell, Frome, Somersetshire. Then follow the Mammalia from the 
Stonesfield Slate of the genera Amphitherium, Phascolotherium, and Stereog- 
nathus , comprising four species. The remainder of the work is occupied by 
the consideration and description of the Purbeck Mammalia, which (with 
the exception of Spalacotheriuum tricuspidens, Owen discovered in 1854 
by Messrs. Wilcox and Brodie, of Swanage) were all brought to light 
through explorations carried on with characteristic ardour, and at much 
cost and personal risk, by Samuel H. Beckles, Esq., F.B.S. They occupy 
(with woodcuts) ninety-three pages of letter-press and nearly the whole of 
four plates. The descriptions of these early types of small Marsupial 
Mammals are founded almost entirely upon the evidence afforded by lower 
jaws, not more than half-a-dozen specimens being found in which the upper 
dental series are preserved, and no crania are as yet known. Above ten 
genera and twenty-five species have been determined from the Purbeck 
beds, Durdlestone Bay, Dorsetshire, and described by Professor Owen. The 
plates have been most carefully and successfully drawn by Mr. Alfred T. 
| Hollick. 
Death of Sir John Her schell. — One of our greatest philosophers has gone 
from among us. Though, of course, more of an astronomer than a geolo- 
gist, he was nevertheless a distinguished thinker in matters of geologic 
science. He died on May 11 last, at the advanced age of seventy-nine, in 
the full possession of all his mental faculties. Though he devoted most of 
his time to astronomy, natural philosophy, chemistry, meteorology, physical 
geography, etc., geology did not altogether escape his attention. Among 
his suggestive contributions to this science may be mentioned the following : 
