THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE 



NEW SERIES. DECADE VL VOL. V. 



No. VIII.— ATJGTJST, 1918. 



0:RXG-XJ<T .A.JL. .A.E.TIOI-.B]S. 



I. — Eminent Living Geologists. 



George William Lamplugh, F.R.S., President GeoL Soc, Assistant 



Director of the Geological Survey of England and Wales. 



(WITH A PORTRAIT, PLATE XII.) 



IT has frequently been asserted that the "born geologist" — as 

 distinguished from the geologist made by education and training 

 — owes his conception chiefly to the formation on which he happens 

 to be born. Nor is it the beauty of the scenery and the attractive- 

 ness of firth and fell, mountain and glen, that usually give the 

 impulse in the making of the geologist. It comes in most cases from 

 the fossils he sees strewn around him in quarr}^ or hillside — things 

 that can be collected and fascinate the youthful mind even more 

 than the rocks themselves. But whether the strata or the fossils are 

 the stimulus required, it is beyond dispute that Yorkshire — in which 

 both are .conspicuous — takes a leading place in England as the 

 birthplace of so many eminent geologists in the past century, and 

 amongst them the subject of our present sketch worthily deserves to 

 find a place. 



George William Lamplugh was born at Driffield, East Yorkshire, 

 on April 8, 1859, and here he spent his early jears until he removed 

 with his widowed mother to the coast at Bridlington when he was at 

 the impressionable age of 13. It is scarcely possible that anyone 

 having any sympathy with Nature should spend his youthful days 

 upon the Yorkshire coast without becoming more or less of 

 a geologist. Young Lamplugh soon began to collect the fossils from 

 the Chalk and Drift, the latter deposit being a veritable open-air 

 museum from the variety of its transported rocks and fossils. From 

 the desire to know more about his collections he was led to the 

 serious study of geology and to seek association with Yorkshire 

 geologists, always a numerous and kindly folk. Amongst these he 

 met with members of the Geological Survey working at the time 

 in the district. Thus began a lasting friendship with the late 

 J. R. Dakyns, with whom he spent some holidays in the field in 

 various parts of the country. Circumstances compelled Lamplugh to 

 enter early into business, but he resolutely determined to make 

 science the serious object of his life, even if it did not procure for 

 him the necessary means of livelihood. 



Among the geological deposits on the Yorkshire coast that soon 

 attracted Laraplugh's attention was the Boulder-clay series, to the 



DECADE VI. — VOL. V. — NO. VIII. 22 



