Obituary — Prof. P. Martin Duncan. 333 



by work in connexion witli the municipal politics of the borough, 

 in which he seems to have played a prominent part. The fact that 

 he served as Mayor shows that he had won the confidence of his 

 fellovv-tovvnsmen, while the admirable arrangement of the local 

 Museum, which under his direction was reorganized upon lines far 

 in advance of the time, is a sign of his interest in the educational 

 institutions of the town. After his return to London to a practice 

 at Blackheath, he was able to spare more time for scientific work, 

 specializing upon the Corals ; and as his interest deepened in the 

 problems which these presented him, he was led to abandon lucrative 

 prospects in his profession and devote himself entirely to original 

 research. In this he was no doubt encouraged by the reception 

 accoi'ded to his first palaeontological papers, which were read in 

 1863 ; they at once gained him recognition as one of the ablest of 

 British palgeontologists ; he was in the following year appointed one 

 of the Honorary Secretaries of the Geological Society, and two years 

 later he was elected F.R.S. 



After leaving Blackheath he settled near Regent's Pai-k, but he 

 was not long allowed to remain in retirement, as in 1870 he was 

 called to the chair of Geology at King's College, and a Fellowship 

 followed in the next year. Shortly afterwards he accepted also the 

 Professorship of Geology at Cooper's Hill, and he held both appoint- 

 ments till his death. He resigned the Secretaryship of the Geological 

 Society in 1870 after a seven years' tenure of office through a period 

 in which the change of apartments had made the duties more than 

 usually onerous. In 1872 he was elected one of the Vice-Presidents, 

 an "office which he held till his promotion to the Presidency in 1876 

 and 1877. In 1881 he was awarded the Wollaston Medal, the highest 

 honour which the Geological Society can bestow. Though it was 

 the Geological Society with which he was most closely connected, he 

 was an influential member of other scientific bodies ; he served on 

 the Council of the Royal Society from 1876 to 1878, was President 

 of the Geological Section of the British Association in 1879, and of 

 the Microscopical Society from 1881 till 1883. By his resignation 

 of this post he terminated an official career of no ordinary useful- 

 ness, and retired to Gunnersbury, where he passed the remaining 

 years of his life. 



On turning to Prof. Duncan's scientific work, one is impressed by 

 the enormous amount he accomplished and the wide range of his 

 interests and influence. As has been previously remarked, his first 

 paper (1856) was botanical, and he long retained his interest in 

 the subject, his last paper on vegetable physiology being published 

 in 1874; while still later he worked out the parasitic algas 

 which he discovered in some of his Silurian Corals. His first 

 important work was the series of five memoirs on the Fossil Corals 

 of the West Indies, a subject which he took up, as at that time he 

 failed to get the necessary facilities for the study of the recent forms. 

 The subject was full of difficulty ; the living Corals of the area were 

 but little known, so that the materials for the comparison of the 

 recent and fossil faunas were quite insufficient. But Prof. Duncan 

 attacked the subject with characteristic energy, and his sound 



