l!fo, 1.] ' OBITUARY. 59 



Born in 1 785, of a family long resident in a secluded York- 

 shire Valley under the shadow of Wharnside, the boy early 

 acquired the hardy habits and imbibed the free spirit of the 

 north, and the man retained till his latest hour, a romantic love 

 of the bold hills and rushing streams, amidst which he first be- 

 came an observer of nature. Every homestead and every family 

 in his native dale of Dent were treasured in his memory, and 

 one of the latest of his minor literary essays was to plead against 

 the change of the ancient name of a little hamlet situated not 

 far from his birth-pi ace. 



Educated under Dawson, at the well-known school of Sedbergh, 

 while Gough and Dalton were residing at Kendal, he proceeded 

 to the great college in Cambridge, to which Whewell, Peacock, 

 and Airy afterwards contributed so much renown. Devoted to 

 the Newtonian philosophy, and especially attracted by discoveries 

 then opening in all directions in physical science, he stood in the 

 Jist as fifth wrangler, a point from which many eminent men 

 liave taken a successful spring. He took his degree in 1808, 

 became a fellow in 1809, was ordained in 1817, and for some 

 years occupied himself in the studies and duties of academic life. 

 His attention to geology was speedily awakened, and became by 

 xiegrees a ruling motive for the long excursions, mostly on horse- 

 back, which the state of his health rendered necessary in the va- 

 cations. 



It was not, however, so much his actual acquirements in geo- 

 logy as the rare energy of his mind, and the habit of large thought 

 and expanding views on natural pheenomena, that marked him 

 out as the fittest man in Cambridge to occupy the Woodwardian 

 chair vacated by Hailstone. Special knowledge of rocks and fos- 

 sils was not so much required as a well-trained and courageous 

 intellect, equal to encounter theoretical difficulties and theological 

 •obstacles which then impeded the advance of geology. 



The writer well remembers, at an evening conversazione at 

 Sir Joseph Banks's, to which, as a satellite of Smith, he was 

 admitted at eighteen years of age, hearing the remark that the 

 new professor of geology at Cambridge promised to master what 

 lie was appointed to teach, and was esteemed likely to do so 

 effectually. In the same year Buckland, his friendly rival for 

 forty years, received his appointment at Oxford, where he had 

 previously begun to signalize himself by original researches in 

 palaeontology. 



