A MEMOIE OF ROBERT ETHERIDGE, F.R.S. 179 
geological members included H. E. Strickland, Dr. T. 
Wright, S. P. Woodward, John Jones (of Gloucester), 
J. Lycett, Dr. C. G. B. Daubeny, and James Buckman. 
A few years later (January 10, 1852) the club met for the 
first time at Bristol, when they visited the Museum under 
the guidance of William Sanders and H. E. Strickland, 
and subsequently examined the gorge of the Avon. In 
the same year the Earl of Ducie (then Lord Moreton) was 
elected a member. Thenceforth the club occasionally met 
for breakfast at Tortworth Court, and after taking to the 
field, returned to that hospitable mansion for dinner. It 
was on one of these occasions that Mr. Etheridge was 
introduced to Sir Roderick Murchison, who in 1855 had 
succeeded De la Beche as Director-General of the Geological 
Survey. The event was a memorable one. 
Murchison was evidently impressed with the knowledge 
and energy manifested by Etheridge, and took steps to 
obtain for him a post in the Government service. In 
consequence, he was appointed Assistant Naturalist to 
the Geological Survey on July 1, 1857, working at first 
under the directions of the naturalist, Prof. T. H. Huxley. 
At that time J. W. Salter, a man eminent for his know- 
ledge of Paleozoic invertebrata, was Palaeontologist. 
Etheridge came to the Museum at Jermyn Street with a 
special knowledge of Jurassic fossils, and he was called 
upon to identify and catalogue the fossils of the Mesozoic 
and Cainozoic formations. In the course of the next few 
years he contributed lists of fossils to the Memoirs on the 
Geology of Parts of Wiltshire and Gloucestershire (1858), 
Geology of Woodstock (1859), Geology of Parts of North- 
ampton and Warwick (1860), Geology of Parts of Oxfordshire 
and Berkshire (1861), Geology of Parts of Berkshire and 
Hampshire (1862), and Geology of the Isle of Wight (1862). 
In 1863, on the retirement of Salter, he was appointed 
Palaeontologist, and henceforth, until he himself resigned 
