No one, however, who will fairly weigh the amount of valuable work done by Mr. Salter, and the large contributions he has made to our knowledge of the palæozoic rocks and the early life-forms which they contain, will deny that a man of such ability deserved some recognition in the way of pension from Government; and it is sincerely to be hoped that Mrs. Salter, with her seven children, may at least be granted some small share of the Royal bounty, as some acknowledgment of the services rendered to science by her husband.
Mr. Salter is buried in Highgate Cemetery, the resting-place of several of his fellow-workers in science.
Richard Nathaniel Rubidge, M.B. Lond., who was well known as an enthusiastic labourer in the geology of South Africa, died suddenly, at Port Elizabeth, on the 8th of August, 1869. Beginning his medical studies under Dr. John Atherstone, of Port Elizabeth, his habit of accurate observation was acquired and fostered in company with his fellow pupil and friend, Dr. W. G. Atherstone, of that town, also known as an ardent and successful geological explorer of South Africa, some time in company with the late Mr. A. G. Bain, who first worked out and mapped the geology of that region.
In 1854 Dr. Rubidge was requested by the merchants of Port Elizabeth to visit and report upon the newly discovered gold-diggings near Smithfield, in the Orange-River Sovereignty. In company with Mr. Paterson he made a careful examination of the spot, and found that gold in small quantities was associated with quartz in the meridonal set of trap-dykes there intersecting the Dicynodon or Karoo beds. In his clear and concise communication of these results to the Geological Society of London (Quart. Journ. vol. xi. p. 1 &c), Dr. Rubidge mentions a fact that may be of interest in connexion with the possible origin of the diamonds that have of late been so profusely found in Orange-River territories, namely, that in the eastern ranges of the Stormberg, beyond Aliwal, the anthracitic coal of the Karoo beds bas been converted into plumbago by the volcanic dykes. Hence it is possible that, by further change, purer carbon has been elicited from the carbonaceous matter by volcanic or metamorphic agency in the Natal ranges, and has been brought down in the form of diamond by the rivers, together with their common agate gravel, derived from the same igneous and often amygdaloidal rocks (see also his letter in the Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xii. p. 237).
In the same year (1854), at the instance of a Mining Company, Dr. Rubidge went to Namaqualand, to report upon its metal-producing capabilities. The results are given by him in the Geological Society's Journ. vol. xiii., a short notice only appearing in the previous volume. The gneissic and schistose rocks of this part of Western Africa being quite new to him, and full of interesting mineralogical characters, afforded a rich field of observation; and he was particularly struck with the probable metamorphic origin of
