lxil PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [May 1906, 



In Frederick Wollaston Hutton, who died on October 27th, 

 the Society has lost a Fellow of long standing, with whom few of 

 ns were, till a few months ago, personally acquainted, but who was 

 widely known for the excellent geological and other scientific work 

 which he had done in the country of his adoption. He was 

 one of a pioneer-band of geologists, of whom Sir James Hector is 

 perhaps the only survivor, who settled in New Zealand many years 

 ago, and devoted themselves to working out the many complicated 

 problems that the islands forming that colony present. He emi- 

 grated in 1866, and never returned to this country till last year, 

 a period of 39 years. He attended the meeting of the Society on 

 May 10th, and gave an admirable summary of a long and intricate 

 paper by his old pupil, Dr. Patrick Marshall, on ' The Geology of 

 Dunedin/ a model of condensation which might be copied with 

 advantage by many readers of papers at our evening-meetings. On 

 that occasion he remarked that the last meeting at which he was 

 present had been in Somerset House, when the assemblage included 

 such celebrities as Murchison and Lyell. Unfortunately, ill-health 

 prevented him from being present at any more meetings, and from 

 enjoying his visit home as he had hoped ; and he was not destined 

 again to see New Zealand, as he died on board ship during the 

 return-voyage, before reaching Caj)e Town. 



Capt. Hutton was born in 1836, the son of a Lincolnshire 

 clergyman. He began life in the Mercantile Marine, but afterwards, 

 in 1855, entered the Army as an Ensign in the 23rd Welsh 

 Fusiliers, in which regiment he served till 1865, attaining the rank 

 of Captain in that year. He saw service in the Crimea and in the 

 Indian Mutiny, and (1860-61) passed through the Staff College at 

 Sandhurst, where geology was already being taught by Prof. T. 

 Hupert Jones. From that period, his love for geology and sub- 

 sequent devotion to science seem to date. He became a Fellow of 

 this Society in 1860, and in the following year contributed to the 

 4 Geologist ' an article entitled ' Some Remarks on Mr. Darwin's 

 Theory,' a subject in which he always took a great interest, and. to 

 which he returned many years later in c Darwinism & Lamarckism, 

 Old & New,' and ' The Lesson of Evolution,' published in 1899 

 and 1902 respectively. This was followed by a paper in the 

 ' Geological Magazine' for 1866, on the Geology of Malta, and from 

 that time his contributions to science deal almost exclusively with 

 New Zealand, to which colony, as already stated, he went out in the 

 last-named year. After farming for a few years in the Waikato 

 (Auckland Province), he joined the Geological Survey at Wellington, 



