96 Obituary — Professor John Morris. 



From 1854 to 1877 Prof. Morris held the Chair of Geology 

 in University College, and during that period he delivered 

 no fewer than 1100 lectures to his class, besides directing 

 field-excursions, and giving demonstrations in the Museum. 



Of the details of his life and work and the well-merited 

 honours that have been conferred upon him, a full account 

 will be found in the Geological Magazine, Decade II. Vol. 

 V. November 1878, pp. 481-487, accompanied by a portrait. 



Like all men of great mind, Prof. Morris had his peculiar 

 traits of character ; but he will be remembered by one thing, 

 more than any other, namely, his extreme readiness to impart 

 scientific information to those around him out of the vast (one 

 might almost say inexhaustible) stores of knowledge which he 

 had for years accumulated in his retentive mind, and yet could 

 retail again most accm*ately when needed, and even recall the 

 very place in the work from whence he had culled it. 



Professor Morris was essentially a ' young-hearted ' man 

 with his friends, and especially so when out with his class, 

 or with the Members of the Geologists' Association. Indeed, 

 one has to compare events and dates in order to show that he 

 was in reality a survivor in our time from the prehistoric age 

 of geology. Morris was in fact the contemporary of Mantell, 

 Buckland, Fitton, Searles V. Wood, Bowerbank, Scrope, Owen, 

 Murchison, and Lyell ; and of his earlier personal friends 

 amongst the great geologists — alas ! now few indeed in number 

 — only Prof. Prestwich, F.E.S., of Oxford, remains. 



It is not without interest to record that almost the last piece 

 of work in which he engaged was to arrange, compare, and 

 verify the original specimens of the "William Smith Collec- 

 tion," preserved in the Geological Department of the British 

 Museum, the first collection formed with a view to prove that 

 strata could be identified by their fossil contents. 



Ill-health has prevented Prof. Morris for the past two years 

 from attending scientific meetings or visiting his friends, as in 

 days of yore ; but up to the last he was cheered by nothing so 

 much as a visit from a geological friend and a chat about some 

 new geological book. And whenever his health permitted, he 

 amused himself by continuing the preparation and revision of 

 the lists of fossils for the third edition of his Catalogue. 



He died on the 7th January from heart-disease, and was 

 interred on the 13th at Kensal Green Cemetery, where many 

 of his fellow-geologists assembled to do honour to so veteran 

 an associate. 



It will gratify the admirers of Professor Morris to learn 

 that it is the wish of his friends and family to raise a suitable 

 and lasting Monument to his memory, and that this memorial 

 shall take the form of a Third Edition of Morris's Catalogue 

 of British Fossils. — H. W. 



