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267 zoologist, all know his merits; and as a botanist, his acquirements were so well thought of, that during his absence in the East, the Chair of Botany at King's College, London, vacated by the death of the lamented Professor Don, was, without solicitation on his part, conferred upon him. The intelligence of this appointment put an end to his meditated project of further travel in Egypt and on the shores of the Red Sea, and Professor Forbes returned to enter upon the duties of his post in 1843.

Launched into the great world of London, Forbes's further progress was not more due to his intellectual than to his moral characteristics. His singular sociality and geniality, the gentleness of his manner, and his ready sympathy with and comprehension of all phases of human character, won for him a prominent place, whatever the society into which he was thrown. Among his fellow-students, Edward Forbes was the leader,—whether the thing to be done were the editing of a mock 'Maga,' the writing and illustrating a song, or a downright piece of hard work. He had no quarrels himself, soothed them among others, and altogether kept men together as no one else could do.

It was these rare peculiarities which, together with his high intellectual qualifications, recommended him to the authorities of the Geological Society, when a vacancy occurred in the Curatorship of their Museum.

Professor Forbes accepted this post in 1842, and availing himself of the opportunities for the study of palaeontology thus afforded him, he soon distinguished himself in the field to which henceforth his energies were principally directed. In fact, when in 1844 he resigned his Curatorship. it was to join the Geological Survey of Great Britain, under the direction of Sir Henry De la Beche, and to take the official position of Palaeontologist to the Survey, a post in discharging whose duties he spent the next ten years of his life.

When the Museum of Practical Geology and the Government School of Mines were established—growing as they did out of the Survey,—Prof. Forbes directed the arrangement of the beautiful collection of fossils now displayed in the former, and became Lecturer on Natural History and Palaeontology in the latter part of the Institution in Jermyn Street. At the same time, many valuable contributions to the 'Transactions of the Geological Society' to the