174 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



as he brought with him the practical experience of nearly thirty years' 

 work on the geological surveys of Great Britain and Australia, more 

 especially in those formations of the earth's crust which belong to the 

 older palaeozoics and also in the igneous masses associated with them 

 round which so many minerals of economic value occur, the nature of 

 which he emphasized strongly, and to which he was one of the first 

 to draw special attention as well as to interpret in their right Ught in 

 Canada. During all the years he spent in Canada he was diligent in 

 mapping, or having mapped, the volcanic rocks of the various regions, 

 examined. It is interesting to note that Principal Dresser's paper,^ 

 giving the result of his studies on the petrography of the Eastern Town- 

 ehips of the Province of Quebec, issued a short time previous to the 

 time of Dr. Selwyn's death, confirms in a marked degree the anticline 

 theory of the structure of the Sutton mountain and other volcanic belts 

 of that part of Canada. 



Selwyn was the son of the late Eeverend Townsend Selwyn, canon 

 of Gloucester Cathedral, by his wife, Charlotte Sophia, daughter of Lord 

 George Murray, Bishop of St. David's, and grand-daughter of John, the 

 fourth Duke of Athol. He was born in Kilmington, Somersetshire, 

 England, on the 28th day of July, 1834. 



His studies were carried out at home, first under private tutors ; and 

 later he completed his education in Switzerland. 



Work in England, Wales and Anglesey. 



At the early age of twenty-one (1845) he was appointed to a 

 position in the Geological Survey of Great Britain under Sir Henry 

 ds la Beche. His earliest work on the British Survey was under the 

 immediate supervision of no less distinguished a geologist tlian A. C. 

 Ramsay. He was one of that contingent of stratigraphical geologists 

 under Ramisay, who did sa mucih to lay down the fundamental and 

 carefully traced lines separating the various geological formations in 

 that wonderful compendium of geology that England has proved to be 

 all in a nutshell. The otiiers on the staff with Selwj^n were : — W. T. 

 Aveline, Trevor E. Jonesi, D. H. Williams, H. W. Bristow, and W. TT. 

 Bailey. Edward Forbes v.-as the palseontologist, W. W. Smythe 

 the mining geologist, Sir Joseph Hooker was the botanist. Dr. Lvoti 

 (later Sir Lyon) Playfair the chemist, while Richard Pliillips was in 

 charge of the laboratory and musieum, with Robert Hunt as koc]>er of 



* "A petrographical contribution to the geology of the Eastern Townships 

 of the Province of Quebec." American Journal of Science, 4th series, Vol. 

 XIII, No. 70, pp. 43-48. July, 1902, New Haven. 



