200 president s address. 



Obituary. 



It is now my melancholy duty to record the great loss the 

 Club has suffered during the year in the death of two of our 

 oldest and most highly respected members, Mr. Richard 

 Howse, M.A., and Mr. John Forster Spence, a past President 

 of the Club : — 



Mr. Richard Hozvse, ALA. 



Mr. Howse was one of the original members of the Club, 

 and at the time of his death was the last of those who 

 attended its first Field Meeting at Whittle Dene, May 20th, 

 1846. He died on March 14th, 1901, aged 80 years. He 

 was a native of Oxfordshire, and from his earliest years had 

 devoted his attention to the study of natural history in its 

 various branches. He gave special attention to geology, and 

 formed a collection of the fossils of his native place Thame. 

 He came to the North as a very young man, and I believe for 

 some time lived in Gateshead, removing later to South Shields. 

 While here he devoted himself very closely to the study of the 

 Permian rocks, on which he became an authority, and the 

 results of his studies he embodied in his Catalogue of the 

 Fossils of the Permian System, and also in his notes on that 

 system. He also investigated the evidences of glaciation on 

 the rocks in the neighbourhood, the results of which he 

 published in a paper in the Transactions of the Mining 

 Institute. 



He was fortunate in coming to this neighbourhood at a 

 time when the naturalists of the district were represented by 

 such men as Joshua Alder, Albany and John Hancock, 

 George Wailes, William Hutton, George C. Atkinson, R. B. 

 Bowman, and others. With these well known naturalists Mr. 

 Howse worked, and later he was associated in the same 

 pursuits with Thomas Atthey, George Hodge, Canon Norman, 

 Dr. Embleton, Henry and George Brady, and William 

 Dinning. 



At the annual meeting of the Tyneside NaturaHsts' Field 

 Club; February 19th 1847, he was elected a member of the 



