ANNIVERSAKY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. XXIX 



tivator, and the Society a Member of great accomplisliments and very 

 versatile abilities. Continued illness prevented him from publishing 

 the results of his labours ; but his fossils, collected with the utmost 

 care and accompanied by valuable notes, have enabled Dr. Falconer 

 and Professor Heer to give an adequate account of the animals 

 which lived upon the preglacial continent and of the vegetation 

 which clothed its surface*. 



Samfel William Kiis^a, born September 20, 1821, was the eldest 

 son of the late Rev. William Hutchinson King, formerly Yicar of 

 Nuneaton. At an early age he showed a taste for scientific studies. 

 While a mere boy, from fourteen to sixteen years old, he kept a 

 journal in which astronomical observations and dissections of insects 

 were noted down. Some of his papers were published at the time 

 in the ' Zoologist.' As he grew older he turned his attention also to 

 Archaeology and Architecture. He entered at St. Catherine's Col- 

 lege, Cambridge, and took the degree of B.A. in 1844, and that of 

 M.A. in 1847. In 1849 he married Emma, daughter of the late 

 John Fort, Esq., M.P., and in 1851 was presented to the Eectory of 

 Saxlingham, Norfolk, where he devoted himself with unflagging 

 energy to his parochial work, and to the study of the antiquities and 

 natural history of the county. 



He travelled much, note- and sketch-book in hand. In 1849 and 

 1850 he visited Switzerland, Italy, Sicily, the Grecian Archipelago, 

 Constantinople, and Asia Minor. In 1855 he explored the little- 

 known valleys between Monte Eosa and Mont Blanc ; and subse- 

 quently published ' The Italian Yalleys of the Pennine Alps,' a work 

 that is of very high value, from the rare combination of literary 

 ability with great powers of observation and artistic skill which it 

 manifests. Subsequently he became a Fellow of the Society of 

 Antiquaries and of the Eoyal Geographical Society. In 1855 he 

 communicated to the Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society 

 a paper on the " Examination of an Ancient Cemetery at Hemp- 

 naU," and in 1859 a second on a "Eoman Kiln and Urns found at 

 Hedenham." 



On his return, in 1859, from his favourite Pennine valleys and 

 the battle-fields of SoKerino and Magenta, his attention was espe- 

 cially directed to the Norfolk Forest-bed by a visit to Cromer with 

 Sir Charles Lyell, Dr. Hooker, and the Eev. John Gunn. From 

 that time he devoted himself to the study of the preglacial beds 

 of Norfolk, and to the accumulation of the fossils that now form the 

 King Collection, which derives a peculiar value from the careful 

 notes of the stratigraphical position of each specimen. 



In 1860 he became a Fellow of the Geological Society. In 1864 

 he was so seriously affected by overwork that he was sent abroad by 

 his medical advisers to seek the rest of mind which he could not ob- 

 tain in England ; but he merely exchanged one field of mental acti- 

 vity for another. On his return through France, after visiting Spain 

 and Majorca, he reopened the famous Cave of Aurignac, and disco- 

 * See Lyell, ' Antiquity of Man,' pp. 214-217. 



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