THE 



GEOLO&ICAL MAGAZINE. 



No. LXXIII.— JULY, 1870. 



o:RXGrXi<rJL.Xj .a.i?,tioxjES. 



EMINENT LIVING GEOLOGISTS. 



I. — John Phillips, M.A., D.C.L. Oxon., LL.D. Cambridge and 

 Dublin, F.E.S., etc., Professor of Geology in the University of 

 Oxford. 



("With a Portrait.) 



JOHN PHILLIPS was born on the Christmas Day of 1800 (n. s.), 

 at Marden, in Wiltshire. At this period the science of Geology, 

 to which he has devoted himself so ardently, was itself struggling 

 into active life. Men had talked of " Theories of the Earth," and 

 with much fancy had built it up of concentric rings, but there were 

 scarcely any actual observers of those strata of which they dis- 

 coursed so poetically. 



John Phillips's father was the youngest son of a Welsh family, 

 settled for very many generations on their own property at Blaen- 

 y-ddol, in Caermarthenshire. The elder Mr. Phillips was trained 

 for the Church, in which some of his relations had place, but this 

 plan was not carried out ; he came to England, was appointed to an 

 office in the excise, and married the sister of William Smith, of 

 Churchill, in, Oxfordshire, designated by Prof. Sedgwick "the father 

 of geology," ^ a title since universally adopted by geologists. Mr. 

 Phillips's first teachings were under his father's eye, but he died 

 when John Phillips was but seven years old, and he lost his mother 

 soon after. The subsequent life of the orphan-boy was directed by 

 his uncle, so well known at that time as " Strata Smith." How 

 directed may be judged of by the result, and by the fondness with 

 which Prof. Phillips dwells on his memory. In his "Memoirs of 

 William Smith," he says, " No one interested in the annals of science 

 would desire that such records of one of its eminent cultivators 

 should be lost; but the writer, an orphan who benefited by his 

 goodness, a pupil who was trained up under his care, feels it a 

 privilege and a duty to endeavour to save from neglect the memory 

 of such a man." 



Before his tenth year John Phillips had passed through four 

 schools, after which he entered the long forgotten, but much-to-be- 



1 See notice of "William Smith, "The father of English Geology," in the 

 Geological Magazine, 1869, Vol. VI., p. 356. 



VOL. VII. — NO. LXXIII. 20 



