53 
E. E. Deslongchamps, who was recently elected an honorary 
member of the Society. 
Mr. Noble said that M. Deslongchamps was one of the 
most distinguished of the French savants and palseontologists. 
His writings and original researches and discoveries in the 
Jurassic rocks of Normandy, embodied in a series of publica¬ 
tions extending over a period of some twenty-five years, are 
well known and highly appreciated. Their value as works of 
reference is greatly enhanced by being copiously illustrated 
with a series of well-executed and accurate plates, lithographed 
by the author. His most important Vv^ork, now in course of 
publication in parts, has for its title, “ The Jura of Normandy,” 
being palaeontological studies of the different rocks and strata 
of which it is composed, and containing the descriptions, with 
plates, of all the fossil Yertebrata and Invertebrata. The 
first part of the serial, issued in 1877, is principally, but not 
exclusively, devoted to a description of the Eeptilia and Cepha¬ 
lopoda ; the second, and at present the last, being a continuation 
of the same subjects, the Cephalopoda being more largely 
illustrated. The author has not confined his researches and 
studies to palseontology, recent ornithology being one of the 
subjects with which he is familiar. The photographs which he 
had presented to the Society were of more than passing interest 
to the citizens of York, as they recalled to the mind of most 
Englishmen an incident in the life of William the Conqueror 
before his memorable conquest of England at Hastings. It 
has been a fact well known to historians that at the time of 
William’s marriage an impediment existed to its legality, the 
nature of which has never been correctly ascertained; but the 
act drew down upon him the censures of the Church, wEich 
were not removed for many years afterwards. It has been 
supposed that the marriage was one of the many cases of 
spiritual affinity which the Church of Eome disfavours unless 
specially allowed by dispensation. By the aid of Lanfranc, 
then the head of a religious house in Normandy, and who was 
sent by William to advocate his cause at the Court of Eome, 
he obtained, after considerable delay, the required dispensation 
legalising his marriage. Whether in condonation of the offence, 
