178 A MEMOIR OF ROBERT ETHERIDGE, F.R.S. 
of the office he was for five years lecturer on Vegetable 
Physiology and Botany in the Bristol Medical School. As 
Curator his ability and strenuous industry attracted the 
attention of those under whom he served, notably of John 
Scandrett Harford, of Blaize Castle, and William Sanders, 
F.B.S. Sanders was then Honorary Secretary of the 
Bristol Institution, and a geologist of great local know- 
ledge. 
Bristol is happily situated in a region famed for the 
variety of the geological formations that can be studied 
within easy distance. It is rich also in associations with 
the geologists of the early part of the last century — 
Buckland, W. D. Conybeare, Thomas Weaver, He la Beche, 
William Lonsdale, and others. It is interesting, therefore, 
to read in the list of subscribers to Miller’s Crinoidea that 
in 1821 He la Beche resided at Clifton, J. J. Conybeare at 
Batheaston, W. H. Conybeare at Brislington, C. G. B. 
Haubeny at Bristol, and Thomas Weaver at Tortworth. 
William Sanders, who was born in 1799, had commenced 
about the year 1835 to make a geological map of the 
neighbourhood of Bristol, on a scale of four inches to a 
mile. This great task was published in 1862, but long 
prior to its completion, the results of his work in the country 
extending from Bristol northwards to Berkeley, were given 
to his friend He la Beche and incorporated on Sheet 35 
of the one-inch Geological Survey map issued in 1845. 
With this painstaking geologist Etheridge worked a good 
deal, and learned some of his earliest lessons in field- 
geology. 
He was introduced to the Cotteswold Naturalists’ Field 
Club soon after its formation in 1846 ; as we read that in 
1848 “ the club met at Gloucester, at nine o’clock, having 
Mr. Etheridge as a visitor.” ^ At _this date the active 
1 See W. C. Lucy, “ The Origin of the Cotteswold Club,” Froc. 
Cotteswold Club, vol. ix., 1888. 
