ANIOTERSART ADDEESS OF THE PEESIDEXT. xliii 



All his friends (and they were many) must long retain in their 

 memory a vivid recollection of the bright, intelligent eye. the 

 courteous manner, the quiet humour, and the generous feeling 

 which characterized his conversation, and the charm which modesty 

 added to his acknowledged great merits. 



^Ir. Geoege "W. FEATHERSTOXHAroH. — The Society has lost one 

 of its veteran Fellows in the person of ]\Ir. G. W. Featherstonhaugh, 

 who, having been born in 1780, was in his eighty-sixth year when 

 he died, on the 27th of September last, at Havre, where he had 

 been the British Consul since the year 1844. His friend Sir 

 Eoderick Murchison has, at my request, contributed the following 

 sketch of his long and chequered life. 



" ^Ir. Featherstonhaugh was born in London, and, having received 

 a good classical education, went to France during the short peace of 

 Amiens in 1803. Thence he travelled to Italy and other countries. 

 In 1807 he first visited the United States, and in 1808 he married a 

 Miss Ducane, who brought him a good estate in that country, and by 

 whom he had three children. In 1826 he visited Eui'ope, and it 

 was then that, in common with Dr. Buckland and many geologists, I 

 made his acquaintance. Attending, with myself, the lectures of the 

 Oxford Professor, then in the zenith of his brilliant career, Mr. 

 Featherstonhaugh, who, when he came among us was ah-eady a 

 good mineralogist and a great traveller, seized so rapidly upon all 

 the then recent advances in our science through palaeontological 

 discoveries, that he brought out, when he retmned to the United 

 States in 1829, an excellent review of " Geology and its Progress." 

 This article, which developed in a masterly and clear manner the 

 rise and progress of our science, conveyed to the American public 

 an accurate view of the true order of succession of those formations 

 which were marked out by William Smith, Conybeare, and others 

 and ably tabulated by De la Beche. Xor does he omit to do full 

 justice to M'Culloch and those who so well illustrated the power 

 exercised by the eruption of rocks of igneous origin and the structure 

 of such rocks. The review was also remarkable for the energy with 

 which the wi^iter criticised and reprobated the spurious eiforts, of 

 Mr. Granville Penn, Dr. Ure, and other writers of the day, to force 

 all geology into a blind accordance with the Mosaic account of the 

 Creation. Xor is it to be forgotten that he was about the first person 

 who advocated the introduction of railways in America. 



"In the years 1834-35 Mr. Featherstonhaugh made journeys 

 through some of the remotest settlements and outposts of the United 

 States, whether to the frontier of Mexico through the wild territory 

 of Arkansas, or to the north-eastern countries watered by the river 

 Saint Peter. In these excursions he acted as a Geologist of the 

 United States, and presented two Eeports, with sections, in the 

 years 1835 and 1836. The first of these was an examination af 

 the elevated country between the Missouri and the Eed Eiver ; the 

 second a geological reconnoissance by Green Bay and "Wisconsin to 

 the Coteau de Prairie. Being at that time in constant corre- 



