Obituary—LE. B. Tawney. 141 
indomitable spirit. His influence was only beginning to be widely 
felt, but in a paper here, or a controversy there, he showed his 
power, and how he had made himself acquainted with all that had 
been done by others in the subject of which he wrote and spoke. 
That he had no small share of the ability and originality of his 
talented family he gave abundant proofs in early life. His father— 
a clergyman who had distinguished himself at his school and college 
of which he became a Fellow—died when Edward Tawney was 
still young, and he therefore lived much with relations, some of 
whom were men of science. His uncle, Dr. Bernard, who was his 
guardian, encouraged him much in his work, giving him now a 
book, now a microscope, and so his attention was turned to Natural 
Science, the Reports of the Royal School of Mines tell with what 
success. He became an Associate, gaining diplomas in Mining 
and Geology. But he went through the course of study in several 
other branches, and highly distinguished himself in all. He won a 
Royal Scholarship, also the Duke of Cornwall’s Scholarship. He 
was awarded the Edward Forbes medal for proficiency in Natural 
History, and in Mining he gained the Delabeche medal. 
He then enjoyed some years of leisure, in which he carried on 
original research, travelling at home and abroad, and contributing 
many valuable papers to various scientific publications. In the 
Journ. of Geol. Soc. for 1866 we find a paper on the Western Limit 
of the Rhetic Beds in South Wales, and on the position of the 
Sutton Stone. In this we observe the same careful working out of 
the sections bed by bed, and the same painstaking determination of 
the exact species found in each zone, that always characterized his 
work. He had a marvellous faculty of seeing and of sticking to the 
point in any discussion in which he took part. All he thought of 
was whether the evidence was conclusive or not; whether a fact 
was proved or unproved. The individuality of the speakers he lost 
sight of, and mentioned them by name when he had to refer to 
their views only as a man would move about the wooden chessmen 
with which he was playing. He could be severe when unfair 
reasoning or the argumentum ad hominem was brought in by those 
who differed from him in opinion, while he felt that he was only 
bringing in hard facts, bearing directly upon the subject-matter 
before them, and hurting only those who felt that they were being 
proved to be wrong—and were endeavouring to gain a temporary 
advantage but avoiding the real point at issue, or by trying to 
throw ridicule on their opponents. 
In 1870 he contributed a paper on the occurrence of Terebratula 
diphya in the Alps of the Canton de Vaud, referring the rock from 
which he procured it to the Jurassic. This paper gave rise to 
an interesting communication from Mr. Davidson on the range 
and affinities of that and some allied forms. In the same year he 
published, in the Transactions of the Devonshire Association for 
the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art, a paper “On the 
Occurrence of Fossils at Smuggler’s Cove, Torquay,” in which he 
speculates upon the correlation of the North and South types of 
