lvi Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 
of a past generation than to the hurried intercourse of modern life. In a 
difficult situation, where tact as well as firmness was required, his qualities 
were altogether admirable. His conversation, always interesting, was often 
witty. He could rapidly throw off impromptu verses in which some passing 
incident was humorously depicted, and his memory, stored from a wide range 
of reading, enabled him often to interject a happy quotation. These 
characteristic features he retained almost unimpaired up to the last, even 
though the ailment which finally carried him off was gradually sapping his 
strength and causing him much suffering. He bore this burden bravely to 
the end, and died on 31st May, 1908, in the 85th year of his age. 
A. @ 
HENRY CLIFTON SORBY, 1826—1908. 
THE ranks of British geologists have lost one of their most distinguished 
ornaments by the death of Dr. H. C. Sorby, who for more than half a century 
has been looked up to all over the world as the great master by whom 
modern Petrography has been regenerated. He came of a family that has 
been connected with the staple industry of Sheffield since the sixteenth 
century. One of his ancestors was the first Master Cutler of the Cutlers’ 
Company, who died in 1628. His grandfather became, in turn, Master 
Cutler. His father was a partner in the well-known firm of John and 
Henry Sorby, edge-tool manufacturers. His mother, Amelia Lambert, of 
Queen’s Square, London, appears to have been a somewhat remarkable 
woman, from whom he not improbably derived most of his versatile a 
and powers of concentration. 
He was born on May 10, 1826, at Woodbourne, near Sheffield, an estate 
which belonged to his father and which he inherited. His early education 
was obtained at the Sheffield Collegiate School. He used to tell that he 
there obtained, as a prize for arithmetic, a book entitled ‘ Readings in Science,’ 
to which he ascribed no small infiuence in giving him his bent towards 
research and experiment. His tastes in that direction were further fostered, 
after he left school, by a mathematical tutor, the Rev. Walter Mitchell, who, 
having had a medical training, had become a fairly good anatomist and 
chemist, and who initiated his pupil into these subjects, besides superintend- 
ing his mathematical studies. When this accomplished teacher left him, 
young Sorby, not being under the necessity of choosing a profession, 
determined to devote himself to a scientific life. He continued to study 
mathematics, optics, chemistry, and anatomy. He found time also for the 
prosecution of water-colour drawing. “I worked,” he said, “ not to pass an 
