Obituary— RoheH Etheridge, F.R.8. L. 8f JE., F.G.S. 4i'> 



(Natural History), Cromwell Eoad, as Assistant Keeper of Geologj'. 

 To the readers of the Geological Magazine his name must have 

 been very familiar, having appeared on the cover as one of the 

 Assistant Editors since the 1st July, 1865, a period of 39 years. 



Mr. Etheridge was a Herefordshire man, having been born at Eoss 

 on 3rd December, 1819. 



His public career may be said to have commenced with his 

 appointment in 1850 as Curator to the Museum of the Philosophical 

 Society in Bristol, an office which he held with distinction for seven 

 years. During five years of this period he also occupied the post of 

 Lecturer in Botany in the Bristol Medical School, then a highly 

 esteemed centre of medical instruction. He was besides a frequent 

 lecturer on Geology and Palgeontology in the Bristol Philosophical 

 Institution. In 1856, when paying a visit to the Earl of Ducie, who 

 is himself an excellent geologist, Mr. Etheridge was introduced ta 

 Sir Roderick I. Murchison, then Director General of the Geological 

 Survey of Great Britain, as a promising geologist deserving of a 

 more important post than Bristol could offer him, and in the following 

 year (1st July, 1857) Etheridge, through Murchison's interest, was 

 appointed to the Geological Survey as Assistant Palfeontologist 

 under J. W. Salter in the Museum of Practical Geology. 



During the 24 years in which he was attached to the Survej^ 

 Mr. Etheridge travelled over a very large portion of the United 

 Kingdom in assisting the younger Surveyors in their work in the 

 field by means of his paleeontological knowledge. He prepared 

 numerous Palgeontological Reports and Lists of Fossils to accompany 

 the Memoirs of the Geological Survey upon various parts of 

 England and Wales ; he also wrote a Report on the PalEeontology 

 of Jamaica. For fifteen years he gave demonstrations annually in 

 Palceontology to the students of the Royal School of Mines, at that 

 time attached to the Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn Street. 

 "With the assistance of his colleague, Mr. George Sharman, he 

 rearranged the entire Pala?ontological Collection, and prepared 

 a catalogue of the specimens which was published with a preface by 

 Professor Huxley. 



Mr. Etheridge contributed numerous papers to the Geological 

 Society of London, which appeared in the Quarterly Journal of 

 that Society from 1863 to 1889; the most important being his 

 memoir " On the Physical Structure of North Devon," being a defence 

 of the unity of the Devonian system, which had been disputed by 

 Professor J. Beete-Jukes. It occupied 200 closely printed pages 

 of the Journal, with lists of all the known fossils as well as of 

 those personally collected in the field during an examination of 

 the North Devon area, extending over several months. 



He prepared a description of the Paleeozoic and Mesozoic fossils 

 of Queensland, Australia, 1872, collected by Mr. E. Daintree, F.G.S., 

 and later on, in 1878, of the fossils brought home by the Arctiu 

 Expedition under Captain Sir George Nares, R.N., which formed 

 a most important addition to our knowledge of the palgeontology of 

 the Polar lands. 



