366 Obituary Notices of Fellows 



published in the " Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society." Of 

 these, two discuss difficult questions about the nature and relations of 

 the crystalline rocks of the Lizard ; two deal with the neighbourhood 

 of Dartmoor ; and the other two, in which his son, Capt. A. H. 

 McMahon, co-operated, are further contributions to Indian geology. 

 He was President of the Geologists' Association in 1894-5, of the 

 Geological Section of the British Association in 1902, and served 

 more than once on the Council of the Geological Society, of which he 

 was elected a Fellow in 1878. He was awarded the Lyell Medal of 

 that Society in 1899, and in the previous year was elected a Fellow 

 of the Royal Society. At scientific meetings he was an effective 

 contributor to discussion, for he never rose unless he had something to 

 say worth hearing, and was terse and lucid in expression. He 

 exemplified the best results of a military and a judicial training, and 

 united an inflexible integrity to great personal amiability. These 

 qualities, intellectual and moral, made him always a most valuable 

 member of any committee or council. From having worked with him 

 in the study and in the field, for we co-operated in a paper on the 

 Lizard rocks, I can testify to his thoroughness of work, his clearness 

 of thought, and his soundness of judgment. Thus, though no heat of 

 debate ever ruffled his uniform courtesy, he was a formidable antagonist ; 

 this he proved himself on more than one occasion, and perhaps never 

 more than in his last contribution to the " Geological Magazine," which, 

 though published only three months before his death, showed all his 

 wonted grasp of his subject and power of polished satire. Yet he was 

 then hopelessly ill and almost blind, for his eyesight began to fail him 

 in the spring of 1902, and this was followed by a general decline in 

 health, which ended in death on February 21, 1904. 



He was twice married : in 1857 to Miss" Elizabeth Head, who died 

 in the autumn of 1866 ; of their children, two sons, the elder being 

 Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Henry McMahon, C.S.I., C.I.E., who inherits 

 his father's love of geology, and one daughter, are living. In 1868 

 he married Miss Charlotte Emily Dorling, who survives him, together 

 with a son and a daughter, and whom I have to thank for much 

 information about my friend's family history. 



T. G. B. 



