46 Sedgwick. 
: & 
change of the ancient name of a little hamlet situated not far 
from his birthplace. ’ 
Edueated under Dawson, at the well-known school of Sed- 
bergh, while Gough and Dalton were residing at Kendal, he 
proceeded to the great college in Cambridge, to which Whewell, 
Peacock, and Airy afterward contributed so much renown. 
Devoted to the Newtonian philosophy, and especially attracted 
by discoveries then opening in all directions in physical science, 
he stood in the list as fifth wrangler, a point from which many 
eminent men have taken a successful spring. He took his de- 
gree in 1808, became a fellow in 1809, was ordained in 1817, 
and for some years occupied himself in the studies and duties of 
academic life. His attention to geology was speedily awakened, 
and became by degrees a ruling motive for the long excur- 
sions, mostly on horseback, which the state of his health ren- 
dered necessary in the vacations. 
It was not, however, so much his actual acquirements in 
geology as the rare energy of his mind, and the habit of large 
Woodwardian chair vacated by Hailstone. Special knowledge 
of rocks and fossils was not so much required as a well-trained 
and courageous intellect, equal to encounter theoretical difficul- 
ties and theological obstacles which then impeded the advance 
of geology. 
The writer well remembers, at an evening conversazione at 
Sir Joseph Banks’s, to which, as a satellite of Smith, he was 
admitted at eighteen years of age, hearing the remark that the 
new professor of geology at Cambridge promised to master 
Sedgwick and Lee f es. Accordingly, the earliest 
-memoirs of Sedgwick, which appear in the Cambridge Transac- 
tions for 1820-21, are devoted to unravel the complicated phe- 
—— of the granite, killas, and serpentine in Cornwall an 
von: and to these followed notices of the trapdykes of York- : 
¥ 
ea, 
Sones 
