Obituary — Professor Sir Frederick McCoy. 283 



prolongation of a belt which, beginning with the Gulf of Finland, 

 runs across Sweden in a direction slightly south of west; thus 

 including the fjord-pierced coast about Stockholm and the Lakes 

 Malar, Wettern, and Wenern — a belt which is suggestive of special 

 depression. May not this Skagerak basin be only a drowned lake? 

 It is no doubt much deeper than either Wettern or Wenern, for the 

 one is about 50 fathoms at most, and the other is shallower, about 

 20 fathoms; but making some allowance for debris, not a deeper 

 basin than the Lake of Geneva. Mr. Hudleston seems to admit 

 that the deeper part of St. George's Channel may be a drowned 

 river-valley, but the slope of this, if I remember rightly, exhibits 

 some anomalies, which, though on a minor scale, seem best explained 

 by a certain amount of differential movement in the earth's crust. 

 That such movements have occurred comparatively late in geological 

 times, would, I suppose, now be generally admitted. 



T. G. Bonnet. 



PROFESSOR SIR FREDERICK McCOY, K.C.M.G., M.A., 

 D.Sc. (CANTAB), F.R.S., F.G.S. 



Born 1823. Died May 16, 1899. 



It is with deep regret we have to record the loss of another 

 accomplished Naturalist, Geologist, and Palaeontologist, belonging 

 really to the first half of the present century, but who has survived 

 almost to its close. The cable announcement appeared in the 

 London daily newspapers of May 18, of the decease of Sir Frederick 

 McCoy, Professor of Natural Science in the University of Melbourne, 

 Australia, in his 76th year. His last communication to the Geo- 

 logical Magazine appeared in the May Number, p. 193. Professor 

 McCoy was the acknowledged chief of the scientific world of 

 Australasia, where his name and fame will be perpetuated by the 

 splendid Museum of Natural History and Geology in Melbourne, of 

 which he was the founder and lifelong presiding genius. 



Frederick McCoy was the son of Dr. Simon McCoy, M.D., of 

 Dublin, and was born in that city in the year 1823. He was 

 educated originally for the medical profession, and attended lectui-es, 

 hospital practice, etc., in Dublin and also in Cambridge ; but while 

 yet too young to be admitted to the profession he devoted himself 

 assiduously to the study of all branches of Natural Science, classifying 

 the collections of the Geological and Eoyal Societies of Dublin, with 

 the object of applying recent Zoology to Palaeontology as the basis 

 of stratigraphical geology. About this time he accepted the offer 

 of Sir Eichard Griffith to make the palaeontological investigations 

 required for the Geological Map of Ireland for the Boundary 

 Survey, publishing the results in a large quarto volume in 1844, with 

 numerous plates including figures of several hundred new species of 

 fossils, entitled " Synopsis of the Carboniferous Limestone Fossils of 

 Ireland," and a smaller work in 1846, " Synopsis of the Silurian 

 Fossils of Ireland." He was then invited by Colonel Sir Henry 



