Berkeley Cotter (J.C.)

In the offprint of the Comunicações da Comissão de Trabalhos Geológicos, vol. II, fasc. II, a study was published with the following title: Noticia de alguns fosseis terciarios do archipelago da Madeira by J. C. Berkeley Cotter, accompanied by another note on some fossil land molluscs of the same archipelago by Alberto A. Girard. The preface to this work reads as follows: ‘The materials submitted for our examination are not sufficient to determine precisely the subdivision of the stratigraphic system to which the deposits containing them belong; but they serve, we believe, to confirm in general the conclusions reached by the learned Zurich professor (Karl Mayer) that the fossiliferous strata of the island of Porto Santo (‘holy harbour’) and neighbouring islands, which Thomas Edward Bowdich had already identified as Tertiary in 1823, belong to the Helvetian stage, though the possibility should not be excluded that part of these deposits belongs to the Tortonian, or higher stage of the Miocene system.’ The materials mentioned in the passage of the preface quoted above were supplied by the Revd Father Ernst Schmitz, then a professor at the Funchal Seminary (Seminário do Funchal). Berkeley died in December 1919.