96 Obituary — Prof. Allen Harker. 



Again, referring to the Himalayas and the plains south of that 

 range, Mr. Osmond Fisher says (Oh. x., "Physics of the Earth's 

 Crust) : " The conclusion seems irresistible that, corresponding to 

 the long though occasionally interrupted depression of the plains, 

 a correlative elevation of the great range, which has supplied the 

 deposits, has been going on." This seems to me totally at variance 

 with Mr. Eeade's theory of contraction by denudation. 



9, Pembroke Vale, Clifton. Akthuk VaughAN. 



OBITTJ.^K,:Z-. 



PROFESSOR ALLEN MARKER, F.L.S. 



Born 1848. Died December 19th, 1894. 



Bt the early death of Allen Harker, the Eoyal Agricultural College 

 at Cirencester has lost one of its most active and popular Professors. 

 Appointed in succession to Dr. Fream, in August, 1881, Prof. Harker 

 soon gained the esteem and affection of all his students by his 

 admirable courses of instruction, both in the field and in the lecture- 

 room, and by his genial character. It is no easy task now-a-days to 

 teach Botany, Zoology, and Geology ; and even when lessons are 

 restricted to their special applications to Agriculture, the work of 

 the Professor is necessarily of an arduous nature. Prof. Harker, 

 however, carried on his labours with much enthusiasm, and devoted 

 all the time he could to researches on those subjects with which he 

 bad to deal in his lectures. He made known, through the Proceed- 

 ings of the Cotteswold Club, of which he was an active member, 

 many new facts in the local geology. He first drew attention to the 

 fine exposure of the Kellaways Beds in a new railway cutting at 

 South Cerney, where many large " doggers " or concretions of 

 calcareous sandstone were opened up, and where a number of fossils 

 were obtained. Other sections of Cornbrash, Forest Marble, and 

 Great Oolite displayed in cuttings along the same railway between 

 Cirencester and Chedworth, were also described by Prof. Harker, 

 and he discovered in the Great Oolite traces of the organism 

 determined to be Solenopora by Prof. H. A. Nicholson, and sub- 

 sequently described as S. jurassica by Dr. Alexander Brown.' 



In Cirencester itself the records of various well-borings occupied 

 Prof. Barker's attention, and he was enabled by the account of the 

 strata and their fossils, to determine the presence of a small faulted 

 tract of Oxford Clay and Kellaways Beds that had previously escaped 

 notice. 



When, in 1887, during the Presidency of Mr. F. W. Eudler, the 

 Geologists' Association paid a visit to Cirencester and its neighbour- 

 hood, Prof. Harker acted as guide in the excursions made to Birdlip, 

 to the Royal Agricultural College, and to South Cerney. 



He died, after a painful illness, on December 19th, 1894, aged 46. 



1 See Harker, Proc. Cotteswold Club, vol. x. p. 89 ; H. B. 'Woodward, Memoir 

 on the Lower Oolitic Eocks of England, p. 290 ; and Browu, Geol. Mag. Dec. IV. 

 Vol. I. 1894, p. 150. 



