i8 The Irish Naturalist. February, 



thing better in store for me." Oldham recommended him to 

 De la Beche, who had organised the Geological Surve}^ of 

 Great Britain and Ireland, and his first official work was 

 with J. Beete Jukes, in 1850, among the mountain ridges 

 of North Wales. 



From the outset he was thus fortunate in his friends, 

 and he clearly inspired them with confidence. ]\Iuch of his 

 time in England and Scotland was spent on areas of Car- 

 boniferous rocks, and this led to his serving on two suc- 

 cessive Royal Commissions on our coal-reserves (1871 and 

 igoi). The comparatively early death of Jukes in 1869 

 left a vacancy in the directorship of the Irish branch 

 of the Geological Survey and also in the professorship of 

 geology in the Royal College of Science for Ireland. Sir 

 Roderick Murchison recommended Hull for both posi- 

 tions, and he held them until his retirement in 1890. 

 The collections of the Geological Survey were during 

 most of that period housed in the building occupied by the 

 College in St. Stephen's Green, and the long association of 

 the two branches of official geological work, educational and 

 exploratory, is recorded in the excellent series of diagrams 

 and sections illustrating Irish geology in the possession of 

 the Royal College of Science. 



In the winter of 1883-4, Hull was chosen by the com- 

 mittee of the Palestine Exploration Fund to investigate 

 the geology of Sinai and southern Palestine, and his report 

 appeared in 1886. In 1884 he published a narrative of the 

 expedition, under the title of " Mount Seir, Sinai, and 

 Western Palestine." These observations served to intensify 

 his interest in biblical histor}-^ and research. 



More than 150 contributions to scientific journals, 

 from 1855 onwards, are recorded under Hull's name in 

 the Royal Society's Catalogue of Scientific Papers. He 

 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, before reaching 

 the age of forty, in 1867. His success in organising the 

 completion of the one-inch geological map of Ireland, 

 with the accompanying memoirs, before the date of his 

 retirement, led to a certain brevity of treatment in some 

 of the later memoirs ; his artistic taste, however, which 

 was evidenced in landscape-sketches in his youth, guided 



