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SIR CLEMENT LE NEVE FOSTER. 18411904. 



CLEMENT LE NEVE FOSTER was the second son of the late Mr. Peter 

 Le Neve Foster, who, from 1853 to 1879, acted as Secretary to the 

 Society of Arts. Peter Le Neve Foster, who was educated at Norwich 

 Grammar School and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, practised as a con- 

 veyancing barrister from 1836 to 1853, and during this period took a 

 very active interest in the work of the Society of Arts especially in 

 the development of the infant art of photography, and in the move- 

 ments which led to the inception of the Great International Exhibition 

 of 1851. Peter Le Neve Foster was thus specially prepared and 

 qualified to undertake the work of Secretary to the Society, a post to 

 which he was appointed in 1853, and of which he discharged the 

 important duties for more than a quarter of a century. Clement 

 Le Neve Foster's mother was Georgiana Elizabeth, a daughter of 

 the Rev. Clement Chevallier, through whom he was related to 

 Lord Kitchener. 



The subject of this notice was born at Camberwell on March 23, 

 1811, and his early education was obtained at the Collegiate School in 

 that suburb. From the age of 12 to 16, however, he continued his 

 studies at the College Communal of Boulogne-sur-Mer, taking his degree 

 of Bachelor of Science in the University of France in 1857. To this 

 education abroad may perhaps be ascribed the remarkable abilities as 

 a linguist which Clement Le Neve Foster exhibited in after-life 

 abilities which proved of such great service to him in his subsequent 

 career. Entering the School of Mines in 1857, when he was only 

 16 years of age, he obtained the Associateship in Mining, Metallurgy 

 and Geology, winning also the Duke of Cornwall's Scholarship and the 

 Edward-Forbes Medal and Prize. On leaving the London School of 

 Mines, Clement Le Neve Foster spent a session at the famous Mining 

 School of Freiberg, in Saxony, and then visited the chief mining 

 centres of Germany and Hungary. 



In 1860 Clement Le Neve Foster received from Sir Roderick 

 Murchison an appointment on the Geological Survey of England and 

 Wales, and for five years was engaged in mapping the Carboniferous 

 rocks of Derbyshire and Yorkshire and the Wealden beds of Kent and 

 Sussex. It was while working in this last-mentioned district that 

 Le Neve Foster was able to make a very noteworthy contribution to 

 geological science in the memoir, published in conjunction with a 

 colleague upon the Geological Survey the late William Topley " On 

 the Superficial Deposits of the Valley of the Medway, with Remarks 



