May 24, 1858.] 
OBITUARY— CONYBEARE. 
245 
naturalist and comparative anatomist, by bis notice of a then un- 
known fossil reptile, which he showed to be a link between the 
ichthyosaurus and the crocodile, and to which he assigned the 
name of plesiosaurus. This memoir, and another on the same 
subject in the succeeding year, created a most lively sensation 
among all naturalists, and winning the admiration of Cuvier, ob- 
tained for our deceased Associate the honourable post of corre- 
spondent of the Academy of Sciences. But I will not attempt to 
enlarge on these geological and palaeontological triumphs, as my 
contemporary General Portlock has done ample justice to them in 
his recent Presidential Discourse, addressed to the Geological 
Society, in which he has successfully delineated the scientific merits 
of William Conybeare. 
Retiring gradually from the toils of the geologist, and restrict- 
ing himself to those clerical duties and theological readings which 
enabled him to obtain the dignity in the Church which he occupied 
for some years before his death, the last geological effort of Mr. 
Conybeare was his Report on the Progress of Geology, which, as a 
spectator more than an active workman, he gave to the British 
Association for the Advancement of Science, when they held their 
first meeting at Oxford in 1832. 
The masterly manner in which he then grouped the various data, 
and recorded the advances made in the years which had elapsed 
since he was himself a contributor to the science, produced a deep 
feeling of gratitude on my part ; for he encouraged me by the 
assurance that the distinction which had then been recently con- 
ferred upon me by placing me in the chair of the Geological Society 
had been worthily vindicated by my labours in the North of Scot- 
land at one end of the European scale, and in the Alps at the 
other, as exhibited in a great section across Europe which he had 
prepared. 
This approval of so eminent a man was indeed a main cause in 
leading me to make other exertions, which up to this day have not 
been discontinued ; and whatever little merit they possess, I feel that 
they have been to a great degree elicited, first by the works and 
example, and then by the advice and approbation, of William 
Conybeare. For, even in succeeding years, when retired in his 
deanery at Llandaff, he again incited me, after my journeys in 
Russia, at once to publish a geological map of Europe ; saying that 
the area which, in conjunction with my friends, I had laid down 
in that vast empire would enable any compiler to deprive myself 
