528 Obituary. 



the cause was an earthquake. The night was quite calm at the 

 time." The same paper states that inhabitants of neighbouring 

 villages also felt the shock. Can there have been any connexion 

 between this wave and the one felt in Paris ? — See Geol, Mag., 1st 

 Oct., p. 479. 



OBITTJ^A^ia"Sr. 



G. W. Feathekstonhaugh, Esq., F.E.S., F.G.S., British Consul at 

 Havre, died early in October, aged 80 years. In 1827 he was elected 

 a Fellow of the Geological Society of London, and in the same year 

 he communicated a short account of an ancient excavation in the 

 Chalk at Heigham Hill, near Norwich, which had been discovered in 

 digging a well ; afterwards, in 1829, when in America, he sent a 

 paper on the series of rocks in the United States, published in the 

 same (1st) vol. of the Proceedings of the Geological Society. His 

 reputation as a geologist consists mainly in his publications on 

 American Geology. He was elected a member of the American 

 Philosophical Society in 1809. In 1831 and 1832 he conducted the 

 " Monthly American Journal of Geology and Natural Science," a 

 periodical in which were published a great number of interesting 

 geological papers, very many of which, including an '* Epitome of 

 the progress of Natural Science," were written by Mr. Featherston- 

 haugh. In 1835 he published a geological report on the Elevated 

 Country between the Missouri and Eed Eivers ; and in 1836 a report 

 of a geological reconnaissance made in 1835 from Washington, by 

 Green Bay, &c. In 1844 he read a paper before the British Associ- 

 ation at York, '-on the Excavation of the Eocky Channels of Eivers 

 by the Eecession of their Cataracts;" the author, in travelling through 

 North America, had noticed that at some points of the course of all 

 the great rivers there was either a cataract, or evidence of the former 

 existence of one, in rapids now obstructing navigation ; and on com- 

 paring the quantity of water in the rivers now, with certain marks 

 which appeared to indicate the quantity which formerly flowed in 

 their channels, he came to the conclusion that the volume of water 

 was formerly much greater than at present, and that such a state of 

 things was necessary for the excavation of then- rocky channels, 

 which he considers to have been effected by the recession of their 

 cataracts. Mr. Featherstonhaiigh thought it j)0ssible that even in 

 our own island we are not precluded from supposing that the same 

 causes may have excavated river-channels, when England was a 

 portion of a great continent. — H.B. W. 



