Ixii PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [JuDe 1912^ 



and geology were recognized by this Society by the award of the 

 Wollaston Medal in 1893. He twice served on the Council, and 

 was a Yice-President in 1882-83. 



It falls to me to chronicle, with sincere regret, the death at 

 the age of 79 of George Maw, within a few weeks of that of his 

 friend and colleague Sir Joseph Hooker, whom he joined in the 

 memorable journey to Morocco and the Great Atlas in 1871. 

 Mr. Maw, who joined the Society in 1864, and served on the Council 

 from 1870 to 1871, was a man of deep scientific knowledge, of 

 many interests, and no few accomplishments. He was an excellent 

 chemist, a geologist of keen observation educated by wide travel, 

 a botanist of original mind and patient industry, and an artist not 

 only in matters of taste and appreciation, but possessed of executive 

 skill of no mean order. It was this combination of artist and 

 scientific man which enabled him to establish a new and flourishing- 

 industry on the banks of the Severn, that of the manufacture of 

 encaustic tiles. Living in a beautiful house close to the northern 

 end of the NYenlock Edge escarpment, he used his opportunities- 

 to form an exceptionally fine collection of Silurian fossils, much 

 enriched in the early eighties by his Wenlock Shale washings, which 

 he carried out and described in company with Thomas Davidson. 

 These resulted, not only in the discovery of many new species and 

 in the minute investigation of the internal structures of new and 

 old genera of brachiopods, but in a subdivision of these monotonous 

 shales into successive zones, Mr. Maw covered so much ground 

 that it is a matter of embarrassment to select any particular 

 subjects for mention. He gave an account of the structure of 

 the Great Atlas, and demonstrated the former existence of glaciers 

 there down to within 5800 feet of the sea-level. He published 

 notes on a journey from Algiers to the Sahara, and discovered 

 and described the shell-bearing drifts of the Severn Valley near 

 Buildwas. He advocated the occurrence of glaciation in Devon,, 

 gave theories as to the origin of the Bovey and Poole clays and 

 the occurrence of sand-pockets in the Carboniferous Limestone, 

 dealt with cleavage, denudation, and the history of the American 

 Lakes, recorded the occurrence of Ehsetic beds in North Shropshire 

 and Cheshire, and indeed, almost wherever he went, succeeded 

 in observing and adding some new fact or inference of value 

 to the common stock of knowledge. But the paper which will 

 long remain a memorial of him is that dealing with the disposition. 



