140 , OUtuanj — Thomaa Roberts, F.G.S. 



THOMAS ROBERTS, M.A., F.G.S., 



ST. JOHN'S COLL., CAMS,; ASSISTANT TO THE WOODWARDIAN PROFESSOR. 

 Born 1856. Died Jan. 24th, 1892. 



Mr. Egberts must have been a strong man to have come to the 

 front as he did ; for he had not the early advantages that the youths 

 of our large towns generally have now in the way of lectures and 

 schools and colleges, open to any boys who show a spark of 

 intelligence. 



His father was a contractor and agent in Wales, and at one time 

 much better off than the ups and downs of the world left him in 

 his old age. Tom Eoberts was intended for the same line, and 

 thus in early life was familiar with the construction of sea-walls, 

 with laying railway lines, with building, and with the super- 

 intendence of quari'ies and mines. 



Perhaps this influenced his choice of subjects in after-life. How- 

 ever that may be, he went to school, and showed such promise that 

 he was encouraged and aided to pursue his studies in the University 

 College of Wales at Aberystwith, where he obtained a scholarship 

 for Mathematics. Here also he impressed his teachers with his 

 power, and he was sent up to St. John's College, Cambridge, where 

 he won a scholarship on entrance, and, being now able to throw 

 himself entirely into the congenial study of Natural Science, at the 

 end of his course he was placed in the First Class in the First Part 

 of the Natural Sciences Tripos in 1882, and also in the First Class 

 in the Second Part of the Natural Sciences Tripos in June, 1883. 



In the spring of 1883 he was appointed Assistant to the Wood- 

 wardian Professor, in succession to Mr. E. B. Tawney, a post which 

 he has held ever since. 



It may be asked why a man of such knowledge did not do more 

 original work, but the answer is easy. In the first place his time 

 and energies wei'e chiefly given up to educational work, and secondly 

 he was preparing for a much larger undertaking, namely, a treatise 

 on Palaeontology, so that he had no time to keep himself before 

 the public by frequent small descriptions or controversial papers. 

 Moreover, such time as he had to spare was at evei'ybody's disposal. 

 His work must be listened for in echoes rolling on through other 

 people's publications, and the record must be looked for, not in the 

 Proceedings of Societies, but among the hundreds of students that 

 have passed through the Woodwardian Museum since he first took 

 his share in its management and in its educational work. 



But if his published work was not voluminous, it was good. He 

 was a stratigraphical palfeontologist of a very high order, and those 

 who had the good fortune to work with him in the field will 

 remember how careful he always was to work out the fossils of each 

 zone, and how he allowed no correlation which was not supported 

 by palaeontological evidence. 



We pass quickly over the joint paper by Marr and Eoberts on the 



