Eminent Living Geologists— G. W. Lamphigh. 341 



In 1905 Mr. G. W. Lamplugh was elected a Fellow of the Eoyal 

 Society, and in the same year he undertook, under the auspices of 

 the British Association, the examination of the almost unexplored 

 gorge of the Zambesi below the Victoria Falls, one of the grandest 

 features of natural scenery to be met with on the African Continent. 

 "It is difficult," says Mr. Lamplugh, "for anyone standing on the 

 brink of the chasm, after having seen the placid flow of the Zambesi 

 above the Falls, to believe that the fissure into which the river is so 

 suddenly precipitated had been formed gradually by the action of 

 the river itself, and not by some great convulsion during which the 

 very crust of the earth was rent. The narrowness of the abyss, the 

 strange zigzags along which the tumultuous waters rush, after their 

 first great plunge, the mystery which has long surrounded the 

 further course of the river after it swings away out of sight among 

 its forbidding precipices, and the knowledge that the rocks across 

 which it plunges are of volcanic origin are all factors that have 

 aided the illusion." The conclusion arrived at by Mr. Lamplugh 

 after examining the river carefully was quite in agreement with that 

 already advanced by Mr. A. J. C. Molyneux that the prevalent idea 

 of a sudden rent of the earth's crust was inadequate to explain the 

 phenomena observed around the Falls, but was compatible with the 

 view that the river has slowly sunk its channel into the hard rocks 

 which have barred its passage seawards, while evidence aSorded in 

 other parts of the world sufficiently proves that canyons of even more 

 impressive dimensions than the Zambesi have been carved out by the 

 erosive agency of water acting through very long periods of time.^ 



In the following year Mr. Lamplugh was elected President of the 

 Geological Section of the British Association in York and delivered 

 an address on " Interglacial Problems". 



Upon his return from Ireland he took charge of the survey of the 

 Midland District (Nottinghamshire, etc.), and shared as writer and 

 editor in the publication of several memoirs (see list). Subsequently 

 he superintended the field-work in the North Wales district, the 

 full results of which are not yet published. 



In 1910 Mr. Lamplugh attended the meeting of the International 

 Geological Congress at Stockholm ; and previously to the meeting he 

 joined with other noted geologists in an expedition to Spitsbergen, 

 of which some account was contributed to Natiire (December 1, 1910) 

 and a description of a striking shellj' moraine seen there to the 

 Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society for 1911. 



After the retirement of Mr. Horace B. Woodward, F.R.S., in 1908 

 the administrative work of Assistant Director of the Survey was 

 taken up by Dr. A. Strahan, F.R.S., until his promotion to the 

 Directorship in 1914, when Mr. Lamplugh became Assistant Director. 



In the latter year he made one of the distinguished band 

 of geologists who represented our science on the occasion of the 

 holding of the British Association in Australia (in August, 1914) 



^ A paper read before the British Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, meeting in South Africa at Johannesburg, August 30, 1905. See also 

 the Official Gtdde to the Falls, 1905, and the Geological Magazine for 

 December, 1905, pp. 529-32. 



