96 Obituary — R. H. Valpy. 



North of England, where he had lived for the last ten years ; but 

 for the members of his family and his intimate friends, more 

 especially for one to whom he always showed the kind feeling of 

 a brother, it will cast a shadow over what remains of life.' 



L. Fletcher. 



ROBERT HARRIS VALPY, J. P., F.G.S. 



Born September 16, 1819. Died December 18, 1904. 



Mr. R. H. Valpy, whose death, in his 86th year, we regret to 

 record, had been an active worker among the Devonian rocks of 

 North Devon. Residing for portions of many years at Ilfracombe, 

 he gathered together a rich collection of fossils from that neighbour- 

 hood, and his help was cordially acknowledged by Mr. Etheridge in 

 the celebrated paper " On the Physical Structure of West Somerset 

 and North Devon, and on the Palseontological Value of the Devonian 

 Rocks" (Quart. Jouru. Geol. Soc, vol. xxiii, 1867, see pp. 605-8, etc.). 

 Mr. Valpy himself never published much, and his little work entitled 

 "Notes on the Geology of Ilfracombe and the Neighbourhood" was 

 issued anonymously, by Twiss & Sons, Ilfracombe. He was a man 

 who seemed to shrink from publicity, and to prefer a quiet and 

 retired country life. He was the onlj' son of Capt. A. B. Valpy, R.N., 

 of Combe Lodge, Blagdon, Somerset, and was born at Streatley in 

 Berkshire. He was educated, first, under his relative, the eminent 

 Dr. Richard Valpy, F.S.A., at the Reading Grammar School, and 

 afterwards at Harrow and Balliol College, Oxford, and qualified 

 in 1846 as J. P. for Berkshire. In 1849 he purchased the estate 

 of Enborne Lodge, near Newbury, in Berkshire, and this was his 

 principal home during the greater part of his life. There he was 

 highly respected as " the good squire," and he lived to be the 

 oldest magistrate in the county,- 



When engaged in the re-survey of portions of the Mendip Hills 

 in 1869 the present writer, together with Mr. Ussher, had the good 

 fortune to meet Mr. Valpy at Blagdon. Every locality for fossils 

 appeared familiar to Mr. Valpy, who pointed out the occurrence of 

 trilobites in the basement portion of the Lower Limestone Shales 

 near Burrington, the occurrence of bone-beds in the Carboniferous 

 Limestone, and the presence of Rhastic beds in a somewhat abnormal 

 position in the vicinity of Blagdon. He also mentioned that he had 

 found striae, which he considered might be of glacial origin, on 

 blocks of Carboniferous Limestone in the Dolomitic Conglomerate. 

 The information which he had acquired here, as elsewhere, by 

 a very close study of the rocks, was ever generously placed at the 

 service of others. H. B. W. 



1 Reprinted from the Mineraloffical Magazine, October, 1904, vol. xiv. No. 63, 

 pp. 61-64. 



2 If not the founder, he was a member of the Old " Valpeian Club," which dined 

 together annually in London to keep alive the memory of old Dr. Valpy — the author 

 of Valpy's Latin Grammar, on which so many boys were brought up ! 



