Edivard Hull. 



XXIX 



memoirs, that on the ' Geology around Cheltenham,' illustrated with maps 

 and sections and a plate of fossils by C. E. Bone, deserves special mention as 

 an excellent example of combined geological and palaeontological work. 

 More money was expended upon these earlier memoirs of the Survey than on 

 those of later date, which were too often treated very parsimoniously by the 

 authorities. 



Subsequently, Hull surveyed a large portion of the Lancashire coal-field 

 with bordering areas, and this ground was described between 1860 and 1866 

 in five sheet memoirs from his own pen, with a sixth written in collaboration 

 with the late Prof. A. H. Green. He also produced in 1869 a district memoir 

 on the Triassic and Permian rocks of the Midland Counties, which remains 

 the only general account of these rocks that has so far been published. 



During the 17 years of his work in England and Wales much time was 

 devoted to the coal-fields of Lancashire, Cheshire, and ISTorth Wales, and the 

 knowledge thus acquired led him in 1861 to pul)lish his first separate work 

 on the coal-fields of Great Britain ; a treatise dealing not - only with their 

 structure but also with the probable quantity of coal, both in the known 

 coal-fields and beyond their visible limits, to a depth of 4000 feet from the 

 surface. 



Soon after the publication of this book, the great question of the duration 

 of our coal supplies attracted public attention, and this has led to a second, 

 third, fourth, and even fifth, edition ; a striking proof of the need as well as 

 the value and importance of this woi^ of reference both geologically and 

 commercially. 



As a further result of his work on the Survey in England, Hull wrote 

 several suggestive papers, including one of special interest, " On Isodiametric 

 Lines as a Means of representing Sedimentary Clay and Sandy Strata, as 

 distinguished from Calcareous Strata, with special reference to the Carboni- 

 ferous Eocks of Britain " (' Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc.,' vol. 18, 1862). In it he 

 points out that, where mechanical and organic sediments are associated in 

 any formation, one group increases in thickness as the other diminishes. 

 In order to illustrate this point he gives a map of Great Britain on which 

 the thicknesses of the two groups of sediments in the Carboniferous rocks 

 are indicated by a series of lines drawn through the places where these 

 thicknesses are known or assimied to have been equal. The map brings out 

 in a most striking manner the contrast, so far as distribution is concerned, 

 between the two types of sediment, and indicates the general directions from 

 which the mechanical sediments were derived. Subsequent research during 

 the past fifty years has not seriously modified the conclusions at which he 

 then arrived. 



In 1855 Hull was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society of London, 

 and in 1867 a Fellow of the Eoyal Society. In this latter year also he was 

 transferred to the Geological Survey of Scotland as District Surveyor. 

 After a short term of two years in Scotland (1867-8) he was appointed 

 Director of the Irish branch of the Survey, a post rendered vacant by the 



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