It is my duty first to mention those of our fellow-workers whose loss during the past year we have to deplore. Although the number of deceased Members amounts to 23, there are but few whose active cooperation in the special work of the Society has to be recorded.
The name of Robert Hutton is associated with the earliest days of this Society, of which he was elected a Fellow in 1813. He spent the early years of his life in Dublin, which city he represented in Parliament from 1837 to 1841. He was the friend and associate of Greenough, Buckland, and other founders of this Society, in the proceedings of which he ever took the warmest interest. During various excursions through Ireland, he made a considerable collection of minerals and fossils, which, on his leaving Dublin in 1836, he presented to the Geological Society of Dublin, of which he had been a member since its commencement in 1832. In 1836 he was placed on the Council of our Society, in 1837 served as Secretary, and was one of the Vice-Presidents in 1845 and 1846. He took for many years an active part in the Society, but did not contribute any thing from his pen, although always ready to assist others by his advice and countenance. He was also one of the original promoters of the London University (now University College), and was on its Council for 30 years. He was born in 1784, and died in August 1870.
Colonel Sir Proby T. Cautley, K.C.B. In 1831 four young men, all of whom subsequently became eminent and distinguished, met, at the commencement of their professional and scientific career, at a remote up-station in India. Sir Proby Cautley, General Sir Henry Durand (whose untimely death the nation has had so recently to deplore), General Sir William Baker, Member of Council of India, then lieutenants in the army, and the lamented Hugh Falconer, had their attention drawn by the first-named and by an Indian Prince to the rich stores of mammalian remains in the Tertiary deposits of the Sewalik Hills. They all entered zealously upon the investigation of this new and unexplored ground ; and, as Dr. Murchison observes, " by the joint labours of Cautley, Falconer, Baker, and Durand, a subtropical mammalian fossil fauna was brought to light, unexampled in richness and extent in any other region then known. It included : — the earliest discovered fossil Quadrumana ; an extraordinary number of Proboscidea belonging to Mastodon, Stegodon, Loxodon, and Euelephas ; several extinct species of Rhinoceros, Chalicotherium ; two new subgenera of Hippopotamus, viz. Hexa-
