38 PROCEEDINGS OE THE &EOLOGICAL SOCEETT. 



Society would have gladly elected him President. He fin ally quitted 

 the Council in 1876, about which time his health became much 

 impaired, and he was afterwards unable to take any active part in 

 our meetings or in our work. After a lingering illness, he expired 

 on the 25th Xovember last, to the regret of all who enjoyed the 

 privilege of his friendship. The name, however, of Godvrin- Austen 

 will, fortunately, not disappear from our lists, for the x^ersonal influ- 

 ence and the scientific ability of the father have been transmitted 

 to his son, our friend Colonel God win- Austen. 



Of the contributions to science of the late Mr. Godwin- Austen it 

 is impossible, within the brief space allotted^ to these notices, to give 

 any adequate idea. A list of 39 papers is appended to a biography 

 by Mr. H. B. AVoodward (to which I am much indebted), published 

 in the ' Geological Magazine ' for January last. In addition to these, 

 he edited the Memoir on the Pluvio-marine Tertiaries of the Isle of 

 "Wight, left in manuscript by its lamented author, the late Professor 

 E. Porbes, and completed the ' Xatural History of the European 

 Seas,' commenced by the same author. The whole book, after p. 126, 

 is the work of Mr. Godwin- Austen. He also made important con- 

 tributions to the new edition of the ' Greenough Geological Map,' 

 published in 1865. 



His papers on the classification and correlation of the rocks of 

 Devonshire wiU ever be classic in the history of that most difficult 

 region. Mr. God win- Austen, as is well known, objected to the 

 distinction of the fossiliferous rocks beneath the Culm-measures by 

 the title of Devonian, and to the equivalence assumed between these 

 and the Old Eed Sandstone further north, considering the latter to 

 be more nearly connected with the base of the Carboniferous series, 

 and the former as the representative in time of the Up]3er Silurian, 

 the differences of the fauna being regarded as due to the two being 

 deposited in different and separated marine areas. Although the 

 general tendency of subsequent research has been unfavourable to 

 the view upheld by Mr. Godwin-Austen, stiU it is one which can- 

 not whoUy be neglected, and modifications in the direction of it seem 

 likely to be made in the generally received theory. But on whatever 

 question Mr. Godwin- Austen wrote, whether on nodules in the 

 Earingdon Sands or on boulders in the Chalk, whether on superficial 

 or subterranean geology, whether on the physical features of the 

 present or of past geological epochs, he not only adorned it by a 

 clear expository style and a lucid ordering of facts, but by his philo- 

 sophic treatment, as it were, raised the subject to a higher plane of 

 thought. Preeminently ' ' the physical geographer of bygone periods," 

 as he was most happily termed by Murchison, we may apply to him 

 the well-worn but, in his case, most true phrase, nihil tetigit quod non 

 ornavit. One paper only from his pen I wiU, in conclusion, espe- 

 cially mention, because, to my mind, it is most typical of all his 

 work, namely, that " On the Possible Extension of the Coal-measures 

 beneath the South-eastern parts of England.'' To myself, when first 

 I read it years ago, it was like a revelation ; it showed what strati- 

 graphy might become when it was viewed in a comprehensive spirit, 



