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consisted in copying out from various periodicals and works, whatever he thought might elucidate such preparations as especially related to pathology.
Mr. Clift’s immediate contributions to science, at least those bearing his name, are but few. ‘Two only appear in the Transactions of the Royal Society. The first is entitled, “Experiments to ascertain the Influence of the Spinal Marrow on the action of the Heart in Fishes,” and is published in Vol. CV. of the Philosophical Transactions in the year 1815; and the second consists of a description of some fossil bones found in the caverns at Oreston, printed in the volume for the year 1843.
“By the judicious choice,” says his son-in-law, Mr. Owen, “and the care and skill with which these experiments were performed, Mr. Clift, in the first of these papers, established, in contravention to the conclusions to which M. Le Gallois had arrived, that the action of the heart continues long after the brain and spinal marrow are destroyed.”
Mr. Clift was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1823, soon after the publication of the first of these memoirs, and served on the Council of the Society in the years 1838 and 1834, The Transactions of the Geological Society also con- tain some memoirs from the pen of Mr. Clift, “On the Fossil Remains from the Irawaddi,” and on the “Megatherium;” and undoubtedly most of the works on the fossil remains of the higher class of animals, which have appeared since the publication of Sir E. Home’s first paper on the “Protecsaurus,” in 1814, until a recent period, are more or less indebted to Mr. Clift.
Very unequivocal have been the acknowledgments of his
