﻿142 Ohituanj—F. B. Meek: 



tion of the igneous rocks, geysers and gases of that remarkable 

 region have long been famous. In the same year appeared his 

 paper on the submarine volcano of Val di Noto ; while his riper 

 reflections appeared in a memoir on the volcanic rocks of Sicily and 

 Iceland in 1853. 



In 1865 he published his views respecting the causes of the 

 change of climate since the commencement of what has been termed 

 the Historic period, and expressed his belief that the interval known 

 as the Ice Age was due to an alteration of the contour of the earth's 

 surface since Diluvial times. His labours, however, were not re- 

 stricted to the field of Petrology. In 1856 he described what he 

 regarded as a new mineral species from Borgarfiord, parastilbite, 

 differing from epistilbite in some of its angular measurements ; and 

 he published about the same time his examination of the crystalline 

 form of boron. In PalEeontology, again, we find him actively at 

 work ; he described a fragment of a Saurian from the Coal-beds at 

 Zwickau, and that of a fossil snake from Burlington, in Mississippi. 

 It should be stated, moreover, that he was the close friend and ally 

 of Gauss, and wrote the life of this eminent physicist and mathe- 

 matician, which appeared at Gotha in 1856. 



While so ably filling the position of Professor of Mineralogy and 

 Geology in the University of Gottingen, he devoted himself to 

 writing a magnum opus on Etna, which occupied him till a short time 

 before his lamented death. The Chair which after the lapse of thirty 

 years now becomes vacant has, it is stated, been offered to Prof. 

 Tschermak, of Vienna. — W. F. 



FIELDING B. MEEK, 



Palaeontologist, U.S.A. 

 EoEN 10 Dec, 1817. Died 22 Dec, 1876. 



Mr. F. B. Meek was born in the city of Madison, Indiana, U.S. 

 America, Dec. 10th, 1817. His grandparents were Irish Presby- 

 terians, and emigrated to America from the county of Armagh, 

 Ireland, about the year 1768. He spent his early days in Madison, 

 where his father was a lawyer of considerable eminence ; but un- 

 fortunately died when young Meek was only three j'^ears old, leaving 

 his family in very moderate circumstances. From his earliest 

 recollection he was interested in the Silurian fossils so abundant 

 in the rocks of the neighbourhood of his home. He had never 

 heard of Geology, but studied these remains with admiration and 

 wonder as to their origin. On attaining his majority, by the advice 

 of his friends, but against his own wishes, he commenced business 

 as a merchant ; but, absorbed in his favourite pursuit, he neglected 

 his avocation, and in the financial crisis of 1847 he lost his small 

 capital, on which he depended. 



In 1848 he seems to have really commenced his career as a 

 scientific man, being first employed as assistant to Dr. D. D. Owen, 

 on the States Geological Surveys of Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. 



In 1852 he became the assistant of Prof. James Hall, the eminent 

 palEcontologist of Albany, New York. Here he remained until 



