THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE. 



NEW SERIES. DECADE IV. VOL. VIII. 



No. VIL— JULY, 1901. 



L — Eminent Living Geologists : Professor Charles Lapworth, 



LL.D., F.E.S., F.G.S., of the Birmingham University. 



(WITH A PORTRAIT, PLATE Y.) 



CHARLES LAPWORTH was bom in 1842 at Faringdon, ia 

 Berkshire. Five years afterwards his parents removed to 

 Lower Newton, one of the farms rented by his grandfather. He 

 attended the country school at Buckland village, about two miles 

 off, and the vicar of the parish, the Rev. Joseph Moore, finding him 

 an omnivorous reader, generously lent him books from his own 

 library and practicallj' directed his early education. At the age of 

 15 he became a pupil teacher in the school, and in the year 1862 

 entered the Training College at Culham, near Oxford, passing out 

 thence in 1864 with a first-class Government certificate. Of the 

 posts as schoolmaster which were then ofiered him he selected that 

 connected with the Episcopal Church at Galashiels, because it would 

 give him a home and work in the fascinating borderland of Sir 

 Walter Scott. This post he retained for eleven years, and was 

 married in 1869 to the daughter of Mr. Walter Sanderson. 



His holidays were spent in wandering over the Border region, and 

 in the year 1869, in company with his friend Mr. James Wilson, he 

 began the study of the geology of the district round the town, zest 

 being given to the work by the discovery of fossils in rocks which 

 had hitherto been considered barren. His first paper, " On the 

 Silurian Rocks of Galashiels," was read before the Geological 

 Society of Edinburgh in 1870, and was published by that Society 

 and in the pages of the Geological Magazine. While at 

 Galashiels he wrote his paper " On an Improved Classification 

 of the Rhabdophora " (1873). 



In 1875 he was appointed to one of the assistant masterships in 

 the Madras College, St. Andrews, and from that year until 1881 he 

 continued to teach subjects which, though not absolutely uncongenial 

 to him, gave little or no scope for scientific teaching or scientific 

 methods. But the post aiforded much that he wanted, longer 

 holiday-time for research, greater leisure for reading, and, above all, 

 frequent association with such friends as Nicholson and the literary 



DECADE IV. — VOL. VIII. — NO. VII. 19 



