51 



opened to his own field of research. Always zealous in descriptive 

 geology, he gave to the Geological Society in 1816 *, "Notices of the 

 Sections presented by the Cliffs of Antrim and Deny," the fruit of a 

 tour with Buckland, whom he also accompanied to Germany. In 

 1822 appeared the first volume of the 'Geology of England and Wales/ 

 in which the names of W. Phillips and W. D. Conybeare occur 

 together, a most valuable work, of which the weightiest parts were 

 contributed by Conybeare. Strange that thirty-five years elapsed in 

 the life of the author, without drawing from his hand the second part of 

 that capital work not less remarkable the fact, that the deep respect 

 of English geologists prevented any other hand from taking up the 

 pen to complete the work he had begun so well. Among other 

 contributions to his favourite science may be mentioned, Memoirs on 

 the Hydrographical Basin of the Thames f, on the Structure of 

 the South Wales Coal Basin J, on the Extent of Coal in the Mid- 

 land Counties , and on the Great Landslip of Axminster || . 



English geology, under all its aspects, was the familiar theme of 

 his daily conversation ; no one hailed with more delight the dis- 

 coveries of Murchison and Sedgwick in Siluria and Wales ; the work 

 of Wood, and Buddie and Hutton in the Coal-fields of the North ; 

 the successful researches of Mantell in the Wealden, and of Webster 

 and Lyell in less ancient deposits. Nor was he negligent of the 

 great contemporary geologists of France and Germany, Cuvier, 

 De Beaumont, Bronn, Von Buch, or of the cultivators of this 

 science in other parts of Europe. Perhaps nowhere can be found, 

 previous to 1832, so large and so liberal a review of the progress of 

 Geology in the Old World and in the New, as in the still very 

 valuable Report ^f on the state and prospects of this science, which 

 he read to the British Association assembled in Oxford. In that 

 and in separate Essays ** he enters fully into the phenomena which 

 bear most directly on theoretical speculations, and presents, among 

 other data for reasoning, a large section of the crust of the earth 

 from the northern extremity of Great Britain to Venice. 



In examining some of the districts which he has described, he acted 



* Geol. Trans. 1st Ser. ii. 196. f Proc. Geol. Soc. i. 145. 



t Phil. Mag. Ser. iii. xi. 110. Phil. Mag. Ser. iii. iv. 161 ; v. 44. 



|| Edin. New Phil. Journ. xxix. 160. fl Brit. Assoc. Report, 1832. 



** Phil. Mag. 2nd Ser. viii. 215 ; ix. 19, &c. 



