2 Eminent Living Geologists — Po^of. E. Suess. 



vast field of cosmical phenomena dealt with by him in his book. 

 Tlie dominant feature is the careful study of the earth-movements 

 and foldings to which various districts have from time to time been 

 subjected, some areas like Laurentia showing little or no disturbance 

 since Cambrian tiuies, the strata of that epoch lying horizontal, 

 whereas other regions have been affected by more or less complex 

 systems of foldings at successive epochs, the movements being 

 influenced by buttresses of older rocks that have led to deflection 

 and overthrusting. 



But we must not overlook the various services rendered to science 

 by Professor Suess during his long and brilliant career. By his 

 lectures in the University of Vienna he exercised a powerful influence 

 on the work of the distinguished school of geologists whom he taught 

 — including such men as Neumayr, Mojsisovics, Fuchs, Waagen, 

 Penck, and many others, which shows him to have been a great 

 master of our science. 



Since 1851 a steady stream of memoirs issued by him has proved 

 him to be a great worker in geology, while the intellectual stimulus 

 of his writings on foreign geologists shows him to be a great thinker. 



Suess was never a specialist. He began work on Graptolites ; 

 he next laid the foundations of the modern classification of the 

 Brachiopoda and Ammonites. Alpine problems roused his interest in 

 d3-naraical and structural geology, and led to studies of the Austrian 

 and Italian earthquakes, and to his suggestion of the connexion 

 between these and the great circle of European Tertiary 

 volcanoes and the elevation of the Alps. Work on the complex 

 Tertiaries of the Yienna Basin and a study of the Mediterranean 

 littoral geologj^ led to his researches in Faunistic Palaeontology, and 

 so prepared the way for his pupil Neumayr. As a practical application 

 of his geological studies in the Alps we may record that he greatly 

 improved the water-supply of Vienna by bringing it from the Alps 

 by an aqueduct 110 kilometres long. 



For thirty years he was a Member of the Austrian Parliament, 

 where he did good service for science. In 1863 Professor Suess 

 visited London, for which city (as his birthplace) he had a strong 

 attachment. In the same year he was elected a Foreign Correspondent 

 of the Geological Society and a Foreign Member in 1877. He w^as 

 nuide Copley Medallist by the lloyal Society in 1903 and Wollaston 

 Medallist by the Geological Society in 1896, and a Foreign Member of 

 the lloyal Society in 1904. 



Professor Suess retired from the Chair of Geology after forty-four 

 years active service, in his 77tli year. In commemorating his 

 80th birthday on August 20, 1911, his friend Professor Steinmann 

 delivered a eulogium on Professor Suess' work. He writes :^^ — 



"Far beyond his University, indeed wherever the sound of the 

 German tongue reaches, the name of Eduard Suess will to-day be 

 remembered with the profoundest esteem by every geologist and 

 geographer, nay, almost by every naturalist as well . . . 



" Scarcely any other investigator of modern times has influenced 

 science so lastingly and deeply as Suess. For nearly half a century 

 he devoted his mind to the great problem of the formation of the 



