Obituary — Dr. E. A. Newell Arber. 427 



addition to some sixt}' of liis own memoirs, about twenty-five 

 original papers were produced (either jointly or independently) by 

 a group of students including at difi'erent times Bernard Smith, 

 H. Hamshaw Thomas, L. J. Wills, W. T. Gordon, D. G. Lillie, 

 R. D. Vernon, A. "W. E. Don, R. H. Goode, and others. In 1905 

 a moiety of the Lyell Fund was awarded to Newell Arber by the 

 Geological Society, and in 1914 he was elected an Honorary Member 

 of the New Zealand Institute in recognition of his work on 

 Australasian geology. 



From the strictly geological standpoint, Newell Arber's contribu- 

 tion to the science may perhaps be summarized as consisting chiefly 

 in the application of palseobotanical evidence to stratigraphical 

 problems. One of his early memoirs (1903) dealt with the use of 

 Carboniferous plants as zonal indices, a subject of which the founda- 

 tions for this country had been so firmly laid by Dr. Kidston. 

 Much of Newell Arber's later work was concerned with further 

 developments on these lines, and he produced a series of papers 

 dealing with the fossil floras and geological structure of the English 

 coal-fields. His book on The Natural History of Coal was sub- 

 sequently translated into Russian. The economic bearing of his 

 palseobotanical work resulted in a consulting practice concerning 

 the geology of coal both in this and other countries. Newell Arber 

 did not confine his attention, however, to the Palaeozoic period, but 

 studied also the fossil floras of the Mesozoic rocks, especially those 

 of the southern hemisphere. In this connexion his British Museum 

 Catalogue of the Glossopteris Flora (1905) may be mentioned, and his 

 recent account of the earlier Mesozoic Floras of New Zealand (1917). 

 He continued his work to within less than three months of his death, 

 leaving memoirs, in various stages of completion, relating to general 

 palseobotany, and to Devonian, Carboniferous, and Mesozoic plants; 

 it is hoped that some of these may eventually be published. 



Newell Arber had an exceptionally wide knowledge of geological 

 literature, which embraced even its obscurest corners. His interest 

 in bibliographical questions and his high standard of accuracy in 

 such matters, were somewhat unusual in a scientific man and were 

 probably due to his father's influence. But he was no arm-chair 

 geologist. He laid great stress on the importance of taking his 

 research pupils into the open, where he initiated them into the 

 methods of outdoor work. He had that instinct for the field, 

 common to so many geologists, which on its material side results in 

 a com])lete grasp of topography, and on its romantic side may rise 

 to a capacity for being possessed by an absorbing passion for a tract 

 of country. Botanically, Switzerland was his Mecca, while in his 

 geological life Devonshire held a corresponding place. The desire 

 to get there was often almost painfully intense ; to quote from one 

 of his letters — -'I have had a bad attack of the 'West [Devon] 

 a calling ' ... It gets worse and is getting beyond my control." 

 Newell Arber made twelve geological expeditions to North Devon, 

 mainly in connexion with his study of the Upper Carboniferous 

 rocks. The difficulties of the work were extreme. As he wrote 

 after the appearance in 1904 of his paper on the Culm Measures of 



