2 Eminent Living Geologists — 



Club, and a constant attendant at Professor Sedgwick's lectures in 

 the Woodwardian Museum. After taking his Bachelor's degree in 

 1857, he was engaged in tuition for two years, during which his 

 geological tendencies were for the time in abeyance. Mr. Hughes 

 did not proceed to take his M.A. degree until ten years later, 

 in 1867. 



At the commencement of the year 1860 a new career seemed to 

 be opening to Mr. Hughes, when he received the appointment of 

 Secretary to Mr. (afterwards Sir) C. T. Newton, K.C.B., H.B.M. 

 Consul in Rome, where later in that year, and in 1861, Mr. Hughes 

 was left in charge as Acting-Consul. During his residence in Rome 

 he took the opportunity to study the sub-Apennine formations on the 

 hills around the Eternal City, and made collections of fossils from 

 them, and also from the more recent deposits of the Valley of the 

 Tiber. 



One of the most interesting episodes in his life was when he was 

 left Acting-Consul in Eome in 1860 and 1861, when Garibaldi was 

 marching on the city and all sorts of mercenaries were collected to 

 meet him. Among them was a brigade of Irishmen, who gave mone 

 trouble to the Papal officers themselves than to the enemy. He was 

 often called in to help to arrange matters officieusement between the 

 officers and their men, who could not understand one another's 

 language. This kind of training abroad gave him au experience in 

 dealing with men which he has found useful ever since. 



In 1861 he had the option of accompanying Lord Odo Russell to 

 Berlin, and at the same time he received an invitation from Sir 

 Roderick Murchison to join the staff of the Geological Survey of 

 Great Britain. In this " meeting of the waters " his love for 

 geology prevailed, he bade adieu to Rome, and to what seemed to 

 promise in the future a brilliant diplomatic career, and he returned 

 to England as a " Royal hammerer." 



Accordingly we find Mr. Hughes later on in 1861 duly installed 

 as an Assistant Geologist on the Geological Survey of Great Britain, 

 Sir Roderick I. Murchison being then Director-General, and Professor 

 A. C. Ramsay, Director. He commenced work, and was occupied 

 during several field seasons in mapping the Chalk and Lower 

 Eocene strata along the Medway Valley, and near Faversham and 

 Sittingbourne ; and his observations on this region were published 

 in Mr. Whitaker's Memoir on the Geology of the London Basin 

 (Mem. Geol. Surv., vol. iv, 1872). The Chalk was then divided 

 into broad lithological divisions, which were carefully described 

 with regard to their local features, economic products, and leading 

 fossils; and Mr. Hughes remarked that " from tlie varying character 

 of the beds and the irregular occurrence of the layers of flints, it is 

 very probable that the same horizon may not have been everywhere 

 taken as the base of the Upper Chalk." Attention was called to the 

 accumulations of chalk and flint rubble that have attracted much 

 notice during recent years ; and also to the layer of unworn green- 

 coated flints that usually occurs at the top of the Chalk, where it is 

 covered by the Thanet Sand. Mr. Hughes (in a paper read before 



