Obituary — William Cunnington, F.G.S. 191 



and in 1903 was issued the full Eeport of the Geological Survey 

 (dated 1902) on the "Topography and Geology of the Eastern 

 Desert of Egypt," with maps, plates, and sections. His services 

 were called for on questions of irrigation, in the survey of the 

 (peninsula of Sinai, and in an exploration for coal in Abyssinia. In 

 1904 he conducted an expedition in the Soudan with the object of 

 finding water, and in the following year he became Geological 

 Surveyor to the Soudan Government. 



He died of enteric fever at El Koweit, Suakim, on the 30th of 

 January, aged 39. 



WILLIAM CUNNINGTON, F.G.S. 



Born 1813. Died Februaky, 1906. 



The death, in his ninety-third year, of "William Cunnington 

 removes one of the more distinguished local geologists and 

 antiquaries whose observations and collections have done much 

 to advance science. During the middle portion of last century the 

 name of William Cunnington, of Devizes, became familiar to 

 geologists. His extensive collection of the Cretaceous fossils of 

 Wiltshire furnished materials which aided Davidson in his Mono- 

 graph on Cretaceous Brachiopoda, Wright in his Cretaceous 

 Echinodermata, and Daniel Sharpe in his Cretaceous Cephalopoda ; 

 and in the last- mentioned work Ammonites Cunning toni, from the 

 Lower Chalk near Devizes, was named in his honour. For many 

 years Cunnington was one of the honorary secretaries of the 

 Paleeontographical Society. He was elected a Fellow of the Geo- 

 logical Society in 1854. He obtained a fine series of sponges 

 from the Upper Greensand of Warminster, and many of these are 

 described or mentioned in Dr. G. J. Hinde's " Catalogue of the 

 Fossil Sponges in the Geological Department of the British Museum." 



He was a grandson of William Cunnington, F.S.A., of Heytesbury 

 in Wiltshire, who was interested in geological pursuits, probably 

 through acquaintance with William Smith, and celebrated for his 

 antiquarian researches in the county, in which he was associated 

 with Sir Eichard Colt Hoare. While a lad he began to collect 

 fossils from the chalk-pits of Upavon, and subsequently, when he 

 had settled at Devizes as a wine merchant, he assiduously studied 

 the local geology — especially the strata from the Great Oolite Series 

 to the Portland Beds, the Lower Greensand, the Gault, Upper 

 Oreensand, and Chalk ; and he ultimately amassed a collection of 

 more than 20,000 fossils. He was one of the founders of the 

 Devizes Museum, and was honorary curator from the time of its 

 opening in 1853. 



One of his earliest papers was " On the Fossil Cephalopoda from 

 the Oxford Clay constituting the genus Behmnoleuthis (Pearce)," 

 London Geol. Joiirn., No. 3, 1847, p. 1. Most of his contributions to 

 geological literature wei'e, however, published in the Magazine of the 

 Wiltshire ArchEeological and Natural History Society ; they included 



