284 Obituary — Professor Sir Frederick McCoy. 



James, E.E., and Sir Henry de la Beche to join the Imperial 

 Survey of Ireland, just then commenced, and after completing the 

 maps of the districts surveyed by him in the field, he was appointed 

 by Sir Robert Peel's Government as one of the first Professors of the 

 Queen's University in Ireland, the Chair of Geology and Mineralogy 

 in the Northern College being assigned to him, vi^here he lectured in the 

 Queen's College, Belfast, and examined students in Dublin. About 

 this time he undertook, in conjunction w^ith Professor Sedgw^ick, the 

 large work on British Paleeozoic Rocks and Fossils, based on the 

 materials in the Woodwardian Museum at Cambridge, and to make 

 the critical examination of the great series of fossils of the older 

 formations brought together by Sedgwick ; the results of these 

 labours being deemed worthy of the compliment of publication 

 by the Syndics of the University Press of Cambridge, in a large 

 quarto volume, with numerous plates of new fossils from the 

 Carboniferous, Devonian, Silurian, and Cambrian formations, which 

 was issued in 1852, as the second volume of a proposed joint work 

 (but the first volume, which was to have comprised the Rocks, 

 by Professor Sedgwick, was never published), entitled " British 

 Palaeozoic Rocks and Fossils," by Professors Sedgwick and McCoy. 



Professor McCoy was then appointed by Sir J. Herschel and the 

 Astronomer Royal, Sir G. B. Airy, as the first Professor of Natural 

 Science in the University of Melbourne, where, having taken part in 

 the formation of the University, he lectured on Chemistry, Mineralogy, 

 Botany, Comparative Anatomy, Zoology, Geology, and Palaeontology, 

 for upwards of thirty years. He also established the National 

 Museum of Natural History and Geology in Melbourne, of which 

 he was Director to the last, raising it to a distinguished position, 

 not only by the extent of the collections but also by the perfection 

 of their classification. He was Chairman of the first Royal Com- 

 mission on the Gold-Fields of Victoria ; Member from the first of 

 the Royal Commission on Technological Instruction ; Member of 

 the Royal Commission on Education ; Member of the various Royal 

 Commissions for International and Intercolonial Exhibitions for the 

 Colony of Victoria. He was appointed Government Palaeontologist at 

 an early stage of the Geological Survey, determining the ages of the 

 various tracts published on the Maps.^ For over thirty years 

 he prepared, and continued to publish in decades at short intervals, 

 two works for the Government of Victoria, one entitled " Prodromus 

 of the Zoology of Victoria," with coloured figures from the life, and 

 another, " Prodromus of Palseontology of Victoria." He was a 

 Justice of the Peace for Victoria. He was elected a Fellow of the 

 Royal Society of London in 1880, and was created one of the first 

 Doctors in Science, honoris causa, by the University of Cambridge. 

 The Royal University of Ireland also conferred on him their 

 highest degree in Arts and Sciences. He was created a Knight or 

 Chevalier of the Royal Order of the Crown of Italy by King Victor 

 Emmanuel, and has been offered similar distinctions by other 



1 See the Life of A. E. C. Selwyn, C.B., F.R.S., in Geol. Mag., February, 

 1899, pp. 49-55. 



