Obituary—E. B. Tawney. 143 
himself for work in a more important sphere, where, however, it was 
cut off all too soon. 
In 1878 he read a short note on the supposed Inferior Oolite at 
Branch Huish, Radstock, in which he showed, by lists of fossils 
collected by himself, that the upper beds of the section had been 
erroneously referred to the Inferior Oolite. About the same time 
he described ‘‘an excavation at the Bristol Waterworks Pumping 
Station, Clifton,” through Infra Lias, Rhetic, and Keuper. 
He next took part in the inquiry into the nature and origin of the 
Archean Rocks, and examined the St. Davids sections in company 
with Dr. Hicks and another friend. His views on the classification 
of this group he published in a paper “‘On the Older Rocks of St. 
Davids,” read in February, 1878, before the same Society, to which, 
as we have seen, he had already communicated so much good original 
work. While he was hammering along the South Wales coast he 
accepted the offer of a post at Cambridge, and from that dates a new 
era in his life and work. He now, as Assistant to the Woodwardian 
Professor, had charge of one of the largest collections in the kingdom, 
and soon made himself master of all the contents of each part of the 
Museum in turn, This work was just beginning to bear fruit in 
a series of papers under the head of Woodwardian Laboratory Notes, 
in this Macazrne, of which only a few had appeared. 
In these he published the result of the microscopic examination of 
the rocks collected by Professor Sedgwick, and others which he had 
procured himself in his rambles in Wales over Sedgwick’s ground, 
when verifying his localities and sections; but he was cut off in the 
commencement of his work, and with him swept away those stores 
of knowledge, that keen intellect and that matured judgment from 
which we might have hoped so much. He has, however, left his 
mark in the Museum where Salter and M‘Coy did some of their best 
work. But he also gave much of his time to teaching, and from 
this too we may hope the world will reap some benefit hereafter. 
His unusually varied acquirements enabled him to conduct classes 
in Paleontology and Petrology, as well as in Stratigraphical and 
Dynamical Geology. 
There are, perhaps, few sections so likely to attract amateurs and, 
as such, the early observers in Geology as those exposed along the 
cliffs of the Isle of Wight. The succession of different formations 
and different groups of organic remains is so obvious that no one can 
help attempting a classification. Any new work must therefore go 
into great detail and involve the most careful determination of 
species and varieties and a wide knowledge of homologous sections, 
for the general grouping was settled long ago. However, an able 
paper was read before the Geological Society, in which a new reading 
of some parts of the Headon Hill Section was proposed, and upon 
this was founded a revised classification and nomenclature of the 
whole. It required the most intimate acquaintance with Tertiary 
fossils to take part in this question. 
Tawney took the matter up, and with Mr. Keeping, who went 
over most of the work with him and had been for years familiar with 
