194 Eminent Living Geologists — 



President of the Geological Society, and who left his mark as the 

 author of The Silurian System and The Geology of Russia. Upon his 

 decease in 1871, the office was filled by Sir Andrew Ramsay, who had 

 been a member of the Survey since 1841, and local Director since 

 1845, his associates having been Sir Henry James, Dr. Oldham, 

 Professor Jukes, Edward Forbes, A. P. C. Selwyn, Sir William Logan, 

 John Phillips, and other famous geologists. Although only ten years 

 Director-General he had been on the staff for forty years. On 

 his retirement in 1881 at the age of 67, a third eminent Scottish 

 geologist, Sir Archibald Geikie, became Director-General. He had 

 already served on the Scottish Survey for twenty-six years, and at the 

 time of his retirement in 1901 had completed forty-six years of service. 



In the appointment of his successor consideration was paid to the 

 special importance of the work of the modern science of petrography in 

 the Geological Survey. For his eminent qualifications in this subject 

 Dr. J. J. Harris Teall had been invited to join the Survey in 1888, 

 and was selected as Director in 1901. Dr. Teall retired on the 

 completion of his 65th birthdav on January 5, 1914. (See Geol. Mag., 

 1909, pp. 1-8.) 



Dr. Aubrey Strahan, the subject of this memoir, and the sixth 

 Director since the establishment of the Geological Survey, has already 

 attained a long and distinguished period of service and added largely 

 to its Pecords, especially in the investigation of the British Coal- 

 measures and the making of those splendid maps embodying the 

 results of many years of careful and detailed field-work. 



Born in London on April 20, 1852, Aubrey Strahan is the 

 fifth son of William Strahan and Anne Dorothea Strahan (only 

 child of Sir George Fisher). He spent his boyhood at Sidmouth, 

 and received his early education at the Rev. W. T. Browning's school 

 at Thorpe Mandeville, Northamptonshire. At 13 he was sent to Eton 

 until 1870. During his school-days at Eton the Chemical Laboratory 

 was built, and a prize for Chemistry (probably the first prize ever 

 given at Eton for any branch of Natural Science) was won by him. 

 A. Strahan proceeded to St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1870 

 (where his father had also studied). Hi's interest in geology had been 

 stimulated by the Rev. Osmond Fisher (his mother's first cousin), and 

 his first course of the science was in Professor Bonney's lecture-room, 

 where so many geologists received their early training, 



A. Strahan graduated in 1875, and on May 12 of that year was 

 appointed to the Geological Survey under Professor Sir Andrew 

 Ramsay. He commenced his field-work in South Lancashire, and 

 proceeded thence into Cheshire. After completing the surveying of 

 the country around Chester he was engaged upon the Lower 

 Carboniferous rocks of Flintshire with their metalliferous veins, 

 the Silurian rocks of the Clwydian range, and the Trias of the Vale 

 of Clwyd, a deep faulted trough of which the structure was then 

 unknown. 



In 1883, Strahan was transferred to Lincolnshire to assist in 

 completing the last of the Old Series of 1 inch maps. In the two 

 following years he was sent to the neighbourhood of Kendal and 

 Sedbergh, and in 1886 revised the mapping of the Coal-measures, the 



