530 Eminent Living Geologists — 



Museum, and his popular lectures in the institution attract the public 

 as before. 



Although so prominent in the world of science, Dawkins distinguished 

 himself as a student at Oxford in classics, and became diverted to 

 geological interests by the inspiring personality of Professor Phillips 

 at a time when the Natural Sciences were not generally worshipped 

 at our most ancient University. Dawkins, nevertheless, went through 

 the honours' school with distinction, and secured the first Burdett- 

 Coutts scholarship. 



As the outcome of an agreement between two College companions 

 and subsequent lifelong friends, the world has been enriched by two 

 well-known works that were intended to supplement one another, 

 namely, A Short History of the English People, by John Richard 

 Green, and Early Man in Britain, by the subject of this note. 



In 1861 Dawkins was appointed to the Geological Survey of Great 

 Britain, and until 1869, when he was secured by the city of Manchester, 

 was occupied in mapping the Wealden and associated formations in 

 Kent and the Thames Valley, when he became interested in the rich 

 mammalian contents of the cave-earths and gravels. For his work on 

 the Pleistocene Mammalia Dawkins was elected in 1867, at the early 

 age of 28, to the Fellowship of the Eoyal Society. His subsequent 

 work followed this line of research downwards among the mammalian 

 remains of earlier Tertiary times and upwards to the overlapping 

 historical records, paying especial attention to the " central figure of 

 the Pleistocene mammalia", Man. In 1882 he was elected President 

 of the Anthropological Section of the British Association, and six years 

 later President of the Geological Section, while in 1889 his services to 

 Geology were recognized by the Geological Society of London with 

 the Lyell Medal. He has also been elected an Honorary Member 

 of societies like the Berlin Anthropological, the Academy of 

 Philadelphia, the ISTatural History Society of Boston, and the 

 Geological Society of Belgium. On retirement from the Chair at 

 Manchester, Dawkins was elected an Honorary Professor in the 

 University, and has since received the Honorary Degree of D.Sc. 



Dawkins' papers on Tertiaiy Mammalia are marked not only by 

 detailed and accurate descriptions of forms, but by a clear appreciation 

 of the ways in which the materials described bear on palseontological 

 science. His descriptive work cleared up the confusion into which 

 the British Pleistocene rhinoceroses had previously fallen, he showed 

 that the lion and hysena found in the cave deposits belonged to 

 living species, and he added greatly to our record of Pleistocene 

 Cervidse and Bovidse. His work in conjunction with Sanford on the 

 lion from the materials preserved in the Taunton Museum is still one 

 of the most detailed osteological monographs of any mammal, recent 

 or fossil. In clearing up the confusion then existing regarding the 

 Miocene and Pliocene deer, Dawkins pointed out the gradual increase 

 in the complexity of the antlers in phylogeny, and thus indicated the 

 resemblance between this development and the changes which take 

 place during the life of a modern deer. 



Dawkins' interest in the deeper problems of palaeontology is shown 

 especially by his paper on the distribution of the mammoth in space 



