Obituary — Professor John Morris. 95 



PROF. JOHN MORRIS, M.A. Cantab., F.G.S., etc. 



Born February 19th, 1810 ; Died January 7th, 1886. 

 [For more than twenty years one of the Editors of this Magazine.] 



The new year has gathered into its earliest garner another 

 ripened human intellect, whose influence and usefulness in the 

 Geological world for nearly 50 years have done much to promote 

 in others a love for our science to which that life was devoted. 



Professor John Morris was born in the very dawn of 

 accurate Geological thought in this country. 



Eight years before his birth, in the spring of 1802, Playfair 

 had published his celebrated " Illustrations of the Huttonian 

 Theory." In 1807, a handful of scientific men met together 

 and founded the Geological Society of London ; and from 1799 

 to 1815 William Smith (better known as " the Father of 

 English Geology ") was plodding over England, with quiet 

 unobtrusive labour, preparing, unaided, his work, entitled 

 " Strata Identified by Means of their Organized Fossils," and 

 his great " Map of the Strata of England and Wales." 



In June, 1812, James Sowerby commenced to publish (in 

 about bi-monthly parts of 5 plates each) his " Mineral 

 Conchology of Great Britain." 



Such was the condition of the literature of our science in 

 England early in this century. There were no text-books for 

 young geologists in those days, and the science of Geology 

 was no easy path to pursue ; yet John Morris had already 

 taken up the study of rocks, minerals, and fossils, and com- 

 menced to collect materials for his " Catalogue of British 

 Fossils," before the first edition of Lyell's " Elements " had 

 been printed, and as early as the first appearance of his 

 "Principles of Geology," a little book of one volume 8vo., 

 which saw the light in January, 1830, whilst Morris, then 

 twenty years of age, was engaged in business in Kensington 

 as a Pharmaceutical Chemist. 



The modest precursor to Morris's Catalogue was printed 

 at Norwich, and designated " A Synoptical Table of British 

 Organic Eemains, in which all the edited British Fossils are 

 systematically and stratigraphically arranged in accordance 

 with the views of the geologists of the present day, and a 

 reference given to their localities, strata, and engraved figures, 

 by Samuel Woodward." This little book of fifty pages, which 

 appeared in 1830, gave all that was known at that date con- 

 cerning our British Fossils. 



Morris published the first Edition of his Catalogue in 1845, 

 but he had issued preliminary notes, section by section, in the 

 " Magazine of Natural History " from 1839 to that date. 



The second edition appeared in 1854 ; but though constantly 

 urged by his friends to do so, and incited by the awards of the 

 Geological Society, he never achieved a third edition. 



