4 Life of R. A. C. Godwin-Austen. 



succession of organic remains in the Cretaceous and Neocomian 

 rijcks ; a succession which in more recent years has been marked out 

 into various " zones." These, and indeed all the papers of Mr. 

 Austen, exhibit his extensive personal observation, combined with 

 the most philosophical deductions, while at the same time they indi- 

 cate his extensive acquaintance with the writings of others both at 

 home and abroad. No doubt in later years he must have felt the 

 great difficulty, which Lyell and all others have admitted, of keeping 

 pace with the ever-increasing geological literature, that spreads like 

 a deluge over the greater part of the civilized regions of the globe. 



Mr. Austen was one of the earliest English geologists to adopt 

 the term Neocomian, and, as Professor Judd has remarked, many of 

 his papers expose " the viciousness of the term ' Lower Greensand,' 

 and indicate the necessity for a change." ^ The change is coming no 

 doubt, though its slowness in coming shows how difficult it is to get 

 rid of old and well-known names ; and may teach us that they 

 should never be replaced by new terms unless the old ones are 

 absolutely unjust or misleading. It would be impossible in our 

 limited space to do justice to the many important papers contributed 

 by Mr. Austen, and we must refer our readers to the list appended 

 to this article. 



We should not, however, omit to notice Mr. Austen's remarks on 

 the Phosphate beds in the neighbourhood of Farnham and Guild- 

 ford, a subject which had grown into gi'eat importance through the 

 observations made on the so-called " Coprolites " of the Eastern 

 Counties by Professor Henslow. Mr. Austen regarded the phos- 

 phatic matter as of animal origin, and pointed out that, " where the 

 casts of bivalve shells and ammonites are filled with matter con- 

 taining phosphate of lime, these forms must have been first inclosed 

 in the sand, that then the projoer shelly matter was removed, and 

 finally that the earthy phosphate occupied the place of the hollow. 

 He supposes that the phosphoric acid may have formed part of the 

 coprolitic matter of the time, this matter in part preserved with its 

 original external form, while more frequently it was broken up, and 

 the component portions diffused amid the sand and ooze." " 



In his paper on the superficial accumulations of the coasts of the 

 English Channel, we have one of the earliest attempts to indicate 

 the sequence of events in the Post-Pliocene period, from the testi- 

 mony of Eaised Beaches, Submerged Forests, Angular detritus, etc. 

 This subject was followed up in a later paper dealing more par- 

 ticularly with the newer deposits of the Sussex Coast. In this 

 latter paper he points out how depressions and elevations have 

 tended, by removing from the action of the sea a more easily dis- 

 integrated stratum, or by bringing up a less destructible one, to 

 accelerate or retard the various agents of denudation. One curious 

 illustration of depression is derived from the form of the bottom of 

 the English Channel, which Mr. Godwin-Austen represents as ex- 



1 Geol Mag. Vol. VII. p. 224. 



- De la Beche, Address to Geol. Soc. 1849, p. 66. 



