Xll 



works, " The Tertiary Fluvio-Marine Formation of the Isle of Wight," 

 and " The Natural History of the European Seas." 



High as the reputation of Godwin- Austen (for so we must hence- 

 forth call him) deservedly was as a patient observer, an accurate 

 describer, and a close reasoner, he now began to give proof that his 

 abilities and sympathies were not confined to the narrower sphere in 

 which he had first won distinction. His versatility of mind, his 

 capacity for doing work of a much higher order and for following 

 out the most difficult lines of philosophical investigation, began to be 

 displayed in a series of essays which have justly earned for him the 

 title of the " Physical Geographer of bye-gone periods." The many- 

 sidedness of his mind was exhibited, not only in the circumstance that 

 he was able to complete Forbes' Essay on the Distribution of Marine 

 Forms of Life, but by the fact that in 1840 he read before the 

 Geological Society a remarkable and suggestive palseontological 

 memoir ; the views which he at that time enunciated on the zoological 

 position of the extinct forms of Cephalopoda have perhaps not yet 

 received from naturalists the attention which they deserve. At the 

 British- Association meeting at Birmingham in 1849 we find him 

 treating with great ability two difficult questions of Botanical Morph- 

 ology. 



Mr. God win- Austen's various studies had led him to consider 

 carefully the conditions under which different geological deposits 

 were formed. Long ago he threw out the suggestion that the Old 

 Bed Sandstone and the Poikilitic strata are of lacustrine origin ; 

 his interesting essays on the occurrence of blocks of granite 

 and coal embedded in the midst of the chalk exhibit the same pre- 

 vailing tendency of his speculations. Even before the year 1850 he 

 had undertaken to write the " Geological History of the European 

 Area," and he also contemplated the possibility of preparing an atlas 

 exhibiting the distribution of land and water at different geological 

 periods. It is not difficult to gather from some of his later essays 

 that in the course of time he became convinced of the impossibility of 

 performing such a task in a manner which would have satisfied his 

 accurate and critical mind ; but at this time a problem fortunately 

 presented itself to him, which his extensive and minute knowledge of 

 the geology of Southern Britain, Northern France, and Belgium, and 

 his powers of insight and generalisation admirably fitted him to 

 grapple with. 



That a ridge of palaeozoic, and possibly coal-bearing, rocks extends 

 beneath the Secondary and Tertiary strata lying beneath the Mendip 

 Hills and the Ardennes had been suggested with more or less dis- 

 tinctness by Buckland, Conybeare, and De la Beche in this country, 

 and by De Beaumont, Dufrenoy, and Meugy on the Continent. But 

 in his famous essay " On the Possible Extension of the Coal-measures 



