S44 Memoir of Mr. G. Poulett Scrope. 



and also of a biography of his brother. Lord Sydenham : but his 

 principal, as it was his earliest, study, was geology. When quite a 

 youth, happening to be at Naples, he was much struck with the 

 phenomena of Mount Vesuvius ; and being led to follow up the study 

 of them he afterwards examined the region of extinct volcanoes in 

 Central France and other countries, collecting materials for a work 

 which he then published, and which has been generally received as 

 the best authority on the subject. For this, in 1867, he received 

 from the Geological Society the Woollaston Gold Medal, the highest 

 honour at the disposal of that Body. Of his labours in geology 

 including various occasional papers which appeared in different 

 scientific perodicals, a detailed account (with a portrait of him taken 

 late in life) is given in the " Geological Magazine," vol. vii. (1870). 



Towards the topography of Wiltshire he made a very valuable 

 contribution by the " History of the Parish of Castle Combe," com- 

 piled chiefly from the records of the Scrope family in his custody. 

 This work was privately printed in 4to, 1852, and is already a scarce 

 volume. It was very favourably noticed in the Quarterly Review, 

 vol, xcii., p. 275, as supplying from original and authentic sources — 

 the most proper and useful to an antiquary — a curious account of 

 the mode of local government in a township during the fourteenth 

 and fifteenth centuries. He was the author of an article on "Wilt- 

 shire " in the Quarterly Review, vol. ciii., p. 108 (1858). 



Of our Society he was the first President, and his opening address 

 upon that occasion at Devizes, in 1853, is printed in vol. i. of this 

 Magazine. Several subsequent communications from his pen will 

 be found by reference to the index. After the death of his wife, by 

 whose will the ancient estate of her family, held by them in North 

 Wiltshire without interruption for five hundred years, was placed at 

 his absolute disposal. Mr. Poulett Scrope sold Castle Combe to 

 E. C. Lowndes, Esq., and left Wiltshire altogether, having bought 

 a house at Fairlawn, near Cobham, in Surrey, where he died 18th 

 January, 1876, aged 79. The fine old Church of Castle Combe had 

 been thoroughly restored by him some years before his death. 



J. E. J. 



I 



