THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE. 



No. LXXI.— MAY, 1870. 



EMINENT LIVING GEOLOGISTS. 



I. — Geokge Poulett Scrope, Esq., F.E.S., F.G.S. 



(With a Portrait.) 



GEORGE PoTJLETT ScROPE was bom in London in 1797, is the 

 second son of J. Poulett Thomson, Esq., of Waverley Abbey, 

 Surrey, the head of the eminent mercantile firm of Thomson, Bonar, 

 and Co., of London and Petersbui'g, and was educated at Harrow and 

 St. John's College, Cambridge. During his undergraduateship he 

 passed the winter of 1816-17 at Naples, with a part of his family, 

 where he was struck by the phenomena of the neighbouring volcano, 

 then in almost permanent though moderate activity. Eeturning to 

 Naples in 1819, he renewed his study of Yesuvius and the volcanic 

 territory of the Campagna ; and, in the spring of 1820, made the tour 

 of Sicily, visiting Etna and the Lipari isles. Having by these oppor- 

 tunities been led to take much interest in the phenomena of volcanos 

 — at that era much misunderstood and undervalued by the rising 

 schools of geology, both in England and on the Continent, where the 

 doctrines of Werner were still in the ascendant — Mr. Thomson (who, 

 on his marriage in 1821, had assumed the surname of Scrope) passed 

 the summer of that year in a close study of the extinct volcanos of 

 Central France, and collected there the materials for the volume, 

 published by him some years later (in 1827), " On the Geology and 

 Extinct Volcanos of Central France " — a work which has been ever 

 since generally accepted as the best authority as to this interesting 

 district. 



From France Mr. Poulett Scrope proceeded to Italy, where, after 

 visiting the Euganean Hills and other volcanic districts of Northern 

 Italy and of the Roman territory, he reached Naples once more, in 

 the beginning of October, 1822, fortunately just in time to witness 

 the great paroxysmal eruption of that month, which left Vesuvius 

 lowered in height by some 600 feet, and transformed from a solid 

 cone, with a nearly flat, rough plain at the summit, into a hollow 

 crust or casing, as it were, still outwardly cone-shaped, but pierced 

 internally by a vast crater, a mile in diameter and nearly 2,000 feet 

 deep, which had been torn through the heart of the mountain by 

 powerful continuous explosions of twenty days' duration. The study 



TOL. TII. — NO. LXXI. 13 



