Obituary Notice of Mr James Bennie, 435 



in not allowing him to waste his time and further impair 

 his health by attendance at school. Doubtless it proved 

 fortunate for him that he was early thrown on his own 

 mental resources, instead of having his wits dulled by that 

 everlasting preparation for examination which usually passes 

 for education amongst those who ought to know better. Be 

 that as it may, the daily labour in which young Bennie was 

 early called upon to take a part left him sufficient leisure to 

 enable him to acquire knowledge, as the need for it arose in 

 his mind. It will probably occur to many people to remark 

 that knowledge gained in this way is of much greater 

 permanent value than any attained by means of cram. 

 Anyway, Mr Bennie never seems to have attained to that 

 dislike to mental effort, which those who are injudiciously 

 helped in early life are afterwards only too often apt to 

 experience. 



Like many other natives of the west of Scotland, his 

 attention was soon turned to the records of those past 

 changes of the earth whose effects were constantly before 

 his eyes in his native parts ; and it was not long after he 

 reached early manhood that he began to turn his attention 

 to original work of a geological nature. Evidence of this is 

 to be found in the papers, of which a list is appended to this 

 notice. 



The Geological Society of Glasgow was founded in 1858, 

 and we find Bennie enrolled amongst its members in the 

 year following. From that date until the day of his death, 

 his interest in the work of that Society never flagged, and he 

 soon came to be regarded by its members as one of the most 

 esteemed of the band of energetic and enthusiastic brethren 

 of the hammer, of which that Society has always consisted. 

 Bennie was always greatly interested in the records of past 

 changes of life upon the globe, and never could be got to 

 take much interest in that " lifeless geology," — as Horace 

 Woodward terms it, — whose devotees devote themselves so 

 exclusively to the study of bits of rock, as to lead to the 

 present phase of geological activity being aptly termed 

 the " Stone Age." 



Bennie's enthusiastic study of fossils, and his aptitude as 



