Horace Bolingbroke Woodward

“ Volume after volume now proceeded from his pen: some of his writings were popular, but most of them dealt with the higher departments of scientific research. His work on Lake Superior, and his four volumes of Contributions to the Natural History of the United States, 1857–1862, were of this latter character. We must not overlook the valuable service he rendered to science by the formation, for his own use, of a catalogue of scientific memoirs—an extraordinary work for a man whose hands were already so full. ”

“ He then pointed out that each coal-seam rests on an under-clay with rootlets of Stigmaria, and he expressed his opinion that the under-clay was the old soil in which grew the plants from which the coal was formed. To confirm this observation he visited America in 1841 and examined the coal-fields of Pennsylvania and Nova Scotia, where he found the under-clay almost invariably present beneath the seams of coal. ”

“ SEELEY, HARRY GOVIER (1839–1909) , geologist and palaeontologist, born in London on 18 Feb. 1839, was second son of Richard Hovill Seeley, goldsmith, by his second wife, Mary Govier, who was of Huguenot descent. Sir John Richard Seeley [q. v.] , the historian, was his cousin. Privately educated, he as a youth became interested in natural history, attended lectures by Sir Andrew Crombie Ramsay [q. v.] and Edward Forbes [q. v.] at the Royal School of Mines, read Lyell's 'Principles of Geology,' began to collect fossils, and received help and encouragement from Samuel Pickworth Woodward [q. v.] ”

“ He was educated partly in Montreal, and subsequently at the High School and university of Edinburgh, where Robert Jameson did much to excite his interest in geology. He was in a business house in London from 1817 to 1830. In 1831 he settled in Swansea to take charge of a colliery and some copper-smelting works, and here his interest in geology found abundant scope. ”

“ Thereupon from Dec. 1869 until 1894 he was, in succession to Sir William Edmond Logan [q. v.] , director of the geological survey of Canada, where his work increased as various provinces and territories in British North America were added to the Dominion. His aim was to make the department of growing practical use to parliament and the public. Special attention was given to the goldfields and other mineral areas, to the building materials, soils, agriculture and sylviculture, and to water-supply. As in Australia so in Canada Selwyn personally engaged in field-work. ”

“ He became the first honorary curator of the natural history department of the museum, and worked until 1829 when he was appointed assistant secretary and curator of the Geological Society of London at Somerset House. ”

“ He was an enthusiastic sportsman and often had to use gun and rod for a living when camping out.
Apart from his many official reports dealing with the progress of the survey and with the economic products, he published in 1881 an important paper in the ’Canadian Naturalist' on 'The Stratigraphy of the Quebec Group and the Older Crystalline Rocks of Canada.' He also rendered valuable services to the Canadian commissioners at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876, the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1878, and the Colonial and Indian Exhibition, London, 1886. ”

“ LONSDALE, WILLIAM (1794–1871) , English geologist and palaeontologist, was born at Bath on the 9th of September 1794. He was educated for the army and in 1810 obtained a commission as ensign in the 4th (King’s Own) regiment. He served in the Peninsular War at the battles of Salamanca and Waterloo, for both of which he received medals; and he retired as lieutenant. Residing afterwards for some years at Batheaston he collected a series of rocks and fossils which he presented to the Literary and Scientific Institution of Bath. ”

“ In the course of his work he paid special attention to the coal-formation of Westphalia and northern Europe generally, and he greatly furthered the progress made in mining and metallurgical works in Rhenish Prussia. ”

“ In 1858 he became lecturer on geology, and in 1862 professor, at the Royal Military College, and afterwards at the Staff College, Sandhurst, resigning his post at the Geological Society in 1862, when he took up residence at Farnborough. He retired in 1880 on the abandonment by the military authorities of the teaching of geology. ”

“ Taking full advantage of the instruction he received, he was able to support himself by teaching, and to continue his studies independently. Buffon’s Theory of the Earth interested him, and in 1753 he successfully competed for a prize by writing an essay on the ancient connexion between England and France. ”

“ CHAPMAN, EDWARD JOHN (1821–1904) , mineralogist, was born in London on 22 Feb. 1821, and educated in France and Germany, where he gave special attention to chemistry and mineralogy. He was professor of mineralogy in University College, London, from 1849 to 1853, and professor of mineralogy and geology at the University of Toronto from 1853 to 1895. ”

“ But at length the great strain on his physical powers began to tell. His early labours among the fishes of Brazil had often caused him to cast a longing glance towards that country, and he now resolved to combine the pursuit of health with the gratification of his long-cherished desires. In April 1865 he started for Brazil, with his wife and class of qualified assistants. An interesting account of this expedition, entitled A Journey in Brazil (1868) , was published by Mrs Agassiz and himself after they returned home in August 1866. ”

“ Some of his papers will be found in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (vol. x.) and of the Wernerian Society (1822–1823) , Edinburgh Phil. Journal, Brewster’s Journal of Science, and Poggendorff’s Annalen. (H. B. Wo.) ”

“ In 1876 Medlicott succeeded Oldham as superintendent of the geological survey of India, the title being altered to director in 1885. His duties kept him mainly in Calcutta, where he gave the most painstaking attention to editing the survey publications. ”

“ The question having attracted the attention of Agassiz, he not only made successive journeys to the alpine regions in company with Charpentier, but he had a hut constructed upon one of the Aar glaciers, which for a time he made his home, in order to investigate thoroughly the structure and movements of the ice. These labours resulted in the publication of his grand work in two volumes entitled Études sur les glaciers, 1840. ”

“ In 1851 he joined the geological survey of Ireland, and worked for two years under Joseph Beete Jukes [q. v.] , when he was transferred to the English staff and was engaged during 1853 in field-work in Wiltshire. On 24 March 1854 he joined the geological survey of India, and from August till 1862 was professor of geology at the Thomason College of Civil Engineering at Rurki. ”

“ During vacations he visited all the principal public museums in Europe for the special study of fossil reptilia, and he contributed descriptions of new points of structure and of new species of amphibians, reptiles, birds, and other vertebrate, to scientific societies and magazines. ”

“ Agassiz found that his palaeontological labours rendered necessary a new basis of ichthyological classification. The fossils rarely exhibited any traces of the soft tissues of fishes. They consisted chiefly of the teeth, scales and fins, even the bones being perfectly preserved in comparatively few instances. He therefore adopted his well-known classification, which divided fishes into four groups—viz. ”

“ Medlicott received his early education partly in France, partly in Guernsey, and then entered Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated B.A. in 1850, with diploma and honours in the school of civil engineering, proceeding M.A. in 1870. ”

“ David's, and grand-daughter of John Murray, third duke of Atholl [q. v.] . First educated at home by private tutors, and afterwards in Switzerland, where he developed great interest in geology, he was in 1845 appointed an assistant geologist on the geological survey of Great Britain, and for seven years was actively engaged in the difficult mountainous districts of North Wales. ”

“ During his residence in Hampshire, and, after his retirement, in London he continued his researches on microzoa, contributing many papers, some in conjunction with H. B. Brady, H. B. Holl, J. W. Kirkby, and W. K. Parker, to the 'Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society,' the 'Annals and Magazine of Natural History,' the 'Reports of the British Association,' and the 'Geological Magazine.' He edited the 'Reliquise Aquitanicae' of E. Lartet and H. Christy (1875) , and, with much addition and revision, the 2nd edition of F. Dixon's 'Geology of Sussex' (1878) . ”

“ Selwyn died at Vancouver, B.C., on 19 Oct. 1902. He married in 1852 Matilda Charlotte, daughter of Edward Selwyn, rector of Hemingford Abbots in Huntingdonshire ; three sons and a daughter survived him, one son, Percy H. Selwyn, being secretary of the Geological Survey of Canada. ”

“ Hector drew attention to the erratic blocks and the evidence of extensive glaciation; he noted the general structure of the Rocky Mountains, and described beds of tertiary and cretaceous lignite and coal in the country east of the mountains and at Nanaimo in Vancouver Island. In 1861, on Murchison's recommendation. Hector was appointed geologist to the provincial government of Otago, New Zealand. ”

“ He was elected F.R.S. Edinburgh in 1861, and F.R.S. London in 1866, and also a corresponding member of the Zoological Society of London. The Lyell medal was awarded to him in 1876 by the Geological Society, and the founder's gold medal in 1891 by the Royal Geographical Society. ”

“ G. J. Hinde, 1890) ; 'Tertiary Entomostraca' (1856; supp. with C. D. Sherborn, 1889) ; 'Fossil Estheriæ' (1862) ; 'Foraminifera of the Crag' (1866 and 1895-7) ; 'Carboniferous Bivalved Entomostraca,' with Dr. G. S. Brady (1874) ; and 'Palaeozoic Phyllopoda,' with Dr. Henry Woodward (1888) .
[Biography (with portrait) in Geol. Mag., Jan. 1893; Supp. notice, with portrait, on 90th birthday, ibid. Nov. 1909; Men and Women of the Time, 1899; obit. by H. B. W. Nature, 27 April 1911. The best published portrait is in Life and Letters of Sir Joseph Prestmch, 1899, p. 376.] ”

“ Henry Woodward, Geol. Mag., Jan. 1904, p. 42 (with portrait and bibliography) ; memoirs by H. B. Woodward in Proc. Roy. Soc. lxxv. 1905, and in Proc. Bristol Nat. Soc. ser. 2, vol. x. 1904, p. 175 (with portrait) . ”

“ Mag. 1907, p. 241 (with portrait and bibliographv) ; Men and Women of the Time, 1899; Quart. Journ. Geol. Sec. lxv. 1909, p. lxx; Proc. Roy. Soc. lxxxiii. B. p. xv. 1911 (memoir by Dr. A. S. Woodward) . ”