554 Obituary — Professor Edward Hull. 



appointed District Surveyor and second in command on the Scottish 

 branch. Stationed at Glasgow, he was entrusted with the mapping 

 of the Clyde coal-field. But he had not been more than two years 

 in this new sphere when he received further promotion by being 

 appointed to succeed Jukes as Director of the Geological Survey of 

 Ireland — a post which he continued to fill until he retired from 

 official life, after a service of forty years. 



The Irish Directorship was by no means a bed of roses. The 

 staff included at least one fiery member, who, with characteristic 

 Irish contempt for the ruling power, began opposition before the 

 newly appointed official had set foot in Ireland, demanding that the 

 appointment should be cancelled. "When this demand was rejected, 

 he commenced the same system of petty insubordination and 

 opposition which had reduced poor Jukes to despair. Hull, 

 howevei", as an Irishman, was probably not wholly unaccustomed 

 to such tactics. He never succeeded in permanently silencing the 

 malcontent, and made many an appeal to his chief in Jermyn Street 

 for support. Indeed, no small part of his official correspondence 

 with headquarters consisted in reports of fresh and unexpected 

 devices of opposition. But his equanimity seemed never to be 

 seriously ruffled. No higher testimony to his essential good-nature 

 could be desired than the fact that he bore the perpetual worry for 

 two and twenty years without losing either his wits or his temper. 

 During his reign in Ireland he had the opportunity of seeing the 

 geology of every part of the island. This wide experience gave him 

 material for the preparation of a convenient new general geological 

 map of the country on the scale of 8 miles to an inch. While 

 discharging his duties in the Survey he also held the Professorship 

 of Geology in the Royal College of Science in Dublin. 



In 1891 Hull retired from official life. He was then little more 

 than 60 years of age, and still in full possession of health and 

 vigour. He determined to come to London and settle there in the 

 expectation that he might find congenial employment as a practical 

 geologist or geological engineer, especially in connexion with such 

 matters as coal-mining and water-supply, in which he had often been 

 consulted during his life on the Survey. He never allowed his pen 

 to rust. The list of his memoirs, papers, and separate books is 

 a monument of his industry. He was a voluminous writer on 

 English geology from the beginning of his life in the Survey 

 onwards. Some of his early papers are marked by a suggestiveness 

 in the discussion of more or less theoretical questions which gave 

 promise of distinction that was hardly fulfilled in his later work. 

 His best known volume, The Coal-fields of Great Britain, is a useful 

 compendium of the subject of which it treats, and has passed through 

 five editions. Reference should also be made to his contributions to 

 our knowledge of the geology of Palestine. He was sent to that 

 country in 1883 by the Palestine Exploration Society, as leader of 

 an expedition which included the future Lord Kitchener as one 

 of its staff, the object of research being to report on the region of 

 Mount Seir, Sinai, and Western Palestine. In later years he 

 devoted much time to tracing on Admiralty and other charts the 



