ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. 57 



John Gunn was born on Oth October, ISOl, and died on 28th May 

 of last year. His lonj^ life of eighty-eight years was marked by a 

 singular ardour of temperament, sterling honesty of purpose, 

 unselfish devotion, and transparent goodness of heart. Even in 

 boyhood and youth, at a time when the literature of the natural 

 sciences was neither so ample nor so accessible as it has since become, 

 he contrived to gratify his strong desire to make himself acquainted 

 with the geological history of his native county. Succeeding 

 his father in 1841 in the rectory of Irstead and Earton Troy, he 

 was enabled to spend his leisure in his favourite pursuit. The 

 remarkable Forest Bed of the Norfolk Coast, which had attracted 

 his notice in his boyish years, now supplied him with materials 

 for earnest research. He became an untiring collector of its verte- 

 brate remains, and a diligent student of its structure and history, 

 tiU in the end he was acknowledged to be the chief authority 

 regarding it. 



But, though unwearied and enthusiastic in the acquisition of know- 

 ledge, he was reluctant to publish his observations ; consequently 

 the wide extent and accuracy of his information were hardly known, 

 save to those who came into personal contact with him. To them 

 he would ungrudgingly impart all he knew. Of the materials thus 

 supplied by him, a good deal found its way into print in the publi- 

 cations of others, from which geologists gradually came to appreciate 

 how much their knowledge of the Pliocene deposits of this country 

 was due to him. 



With characteristic generosity he presented to the Norfolk and 

 Norwich Museum the fine series of fossils collected by him from the 

 Porest Bed, and by this gift, as well as by the example of his. 

 own enthusiasm, he did much to encourage the study of geology in 

 Norfolk. After having been in the service of the Church for forty 

 years, he resigned his living in 1869, and in the end quitted 

 the ministry on the ground that he found he could no longer 

 hold some of the doctrines which his clerical office required him to 

 teach. It could have been no ordinary strength of conviction and 

 integrity of moral purpose that led a man verging on seventy years 

 of age to relinquish the " place of his birth, the scenes of his child- 

 hood and of a mature and happy life, where almost every tree and 

 shrub had been planted by himself, and, above aU, to part from 

 parishioners between whom and himself there ever had existed a 

 most cordial feeling of good-will." 



Though Mr. Gunn published little, we arc indebted to him for an 



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