Obituary — Professor H. A. Nicholson. 141 



a 'heaven-bora' teacher; however this may be, the writer can 

 testify that his lectures, in the early days of his professorial career, 

 were characterized by the same fluent delivery, without a shadow 

 of hesitation, by the same clearness of exposition, making a complex 

 subject appear simple to the understanding, and by the same fulness 

 of illustration, which distinguished them throughout the succeeding 

 years. It is not surprising that these lectures secured the attention 

 of full classes of University students, so that discipline was never 

 called for, and they proved equally as attractive and fascinating to 

 the mixed general audience who heard the courses of Swiney 

 lectures on geological subjects, which, on the appointment of the 

 Trustees of the British Museum, were given by Professor Nicholson 

 for several successive years (1878-82, 1890-94) at South Kensington. 

 Although the delivery of the lectures appeared to be without effort, 

 and as it were natural on the part of the lecturer, they involved no 

 small expenditure of mental energy, and their success was due 

 largely to the careful preparation bestowed on them beforehand. 

 The various subjects were illustrated by numerous well-executed 

 diagrams, all the work of Nicholson's own hand, and these were 

 supplemented by chalk sketches on the blackboard drawn with 

 ready aptitude as occasion required, and, when possible, by demon- 

 stration of actual specimens. Nothing was omitted which would 

 be of service in elucidating the subject of a lecture, and the 

 time allotted for it passed all too quickly, at all events on the part 

 of those who listened. 



The departments of Science for which Professor Nicholson felt 

 the strongest predilection were Field Geology and Invertebrate 

 Palaeontology. For the study of the former, no scenes more 

 favourable could have been chosen than those surrounding his 

 birthplace and the home of his boyhood in the Lake District; 

 here most of his holidays were spent, and rest and renewed vigour 

 obtained in working out in detail the complicated geological 

 structure and collecting the fossils from the rocks for subsequent 

 stud}^ As already mentioned, his graduation thesis consisted of 

 an essay on the Geology of Cumberland and Westmoreland ; but 

 previous to this, he had already published, in conjunction with 

 Professor Harkness, a paper of " Additional Observations on the 

 Geology of the Lake Country," and also " On the Coniston Group," 

 announcing the discovery of a rich Graptolite fauna in the Coniston 

 Flags of Sedgwick. Other papers on the Green Slates and Por- 

 phyries between Ulleswater and Keswick and on the Borrowdale 

 Series and Coniston Flags appeared in 1871 and 1877. A still 

 more important memoir on the Stockdale Shales, in which the 

 work and the honour were shared equally with his friend 

 Professor J. E. Marr, was brought out in 1888. In this paper 

 the Stockdale Shales were shown to be capable of division into 

 a series of zones based on lithological characters and their contained 

 fossils, mainly graptolites, and additional evidence was thus fur- 

 nished of the value of these organisms as a means of comparison 

 of Lower Paleeozoic rocks of distant areas. A shorter paper by 



