142 Obituary—E. B. Tawney. 
some of the Devonian Rocks, and in 1872 he wrote a short note 
“On the Occurrence of Zoophycus scoparius (Thioll.),” a plume- 
shaped alga “in the Inferior Oolite of Dundry.” In the same year 
he accepted a post in the Bristol Museum, and by the time the 
British Association visited Bristol in 1875, he had got the Museum 
into a very different state from that in which he had found it. The 
specimens were arranged and a large proportion named. All this 
time he was carrying on his researches in the rocks of that most 
varied district, and the results of his original work and of his ex- 
tensive reading were embodied in a succession of papers communi- 
cated to the Bristol Naturalists’ Society. He contributed to the 
excellent guide which was published under the sanction of the local 
executive committee of the British Association, the Introduction to 
the Chapter on the Physical Geography and Geology of the district, 
as well as the articles on the Coal-measures and New Red Period, 
and that on the Inferior Oolite. 
In the Proceedings of the Bristol Naturalists’ Society also we find, 
under the head of ‘“‘ Museum Notes,” a paper on the Dundry Gastero- 
poda, read in 1878, in which he describes and figures at least nineteen 
new species. 
In the same year he offered to the same Society a review of the 
Coal Question, a subject of exceptional interest in that district, and 
then being much discussed. Also a paper “On the Use of the 
Divining Rod in the Neighbourhood of Bristol,” in which he gives, 
in conjunction with a friend, the results of some experiments they 
had persuaded a diviner to make before them. 
In the course of his work in the Bristol Museum he found that 
the Lias fossils of various zones had all got mixed up together, and, 
in order to rectify the errors arising from this confusion, he set to 
work to examine the district and collect the fossils of each horizon, 
and as the result of his examination, he read before the Bristol 
Naturalists’ Society, in 1874, a valuable paper ‘‘On the Lias in the 
Neighbourhood of Radstock.” In the same year he communicated to 
that Society some ‘“ Notes on Trias Dykes.” 
There had long been much difference of opinion about the age of 
the Cannington Park Limestone. The views of previous writers 
were founded almost entirely upon lithological and stratigraphical 
evidence. ‘Tawney, however, was at last able to collect a sufficient 
number of fossils from the limestone to consider that the question 
was settled, and in 1875 he read before the same Society his paper 
“On the Age of the Cannington Park Limestone and its Relation to 
the Coal-measures South of the Mendips.” He referred the rock to 
the Mountain Limestone, thus making it probable that if any coal- 
bearing strata should be found above the Cannington Park Limestone 
further south, it would be of the Welsh or Coal-measure type, rather 
than of the less valuable Devon or Culm-measure type. 
In 1875 he read a paper on Professor Renevier’s Geological 
Nomenclature and Table of Sedimentary Rocks, and gave a com- 
parative table of English equivalents. He thus showed that he was 
watching the progress of geology all over the world, and preparing 
