ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OP TIIE PRESIDENT. 



43 



but will remain a lasting monument of his beneficent activity. A 

 glance at the outer cover of the ' Transactions of the Cumberland 

 Association' (Part IV. was published at the beginning of this 

 year) shows the date at which each of the associated societies was 

 founded, and discloses the fact that only one of them (at White- 

 haven) existed before Ward's appearance in the county. The dates 

 of the others vary from Keswick 1869 to Silloth, the latest, 

 1879. 



He married at the beginning of* the year 1877, and very shortly 

 after left the Lake country to do field-work in the lone barren 

 district of Bewcastle, on the Lower Carboniferous rocks, wintering, 

 however, in Keswick as before. But on finishing the Bewcastle 

 work he made preparations for taking Holy Orders, and was 

 licensed to the curacy of St. John's, Keswick, in December 1878. 

 He was as successful in his new duties as he had been as a geo- 

 logical surveyor, and was appointed, at the beginning of last year, 

 to the vicarage of Rydal. But he was scarcely established in his 

 new home when a brief illness, which only at the last seemed 

 dangerous, caused his departure, at the age of thirty-seven years, 

 leaving behind him a widow and two children. 



His genial disposition, and the absence in him of the least 

 approach to the temper of the dogmatist, caused him to number 

 among his friends men of every shade of speculative opinion. It 

 was this amiability, in addition to his ability as a lecturer and the 

 single-mindedness of his desire for the spread of knowledge, which 

 made him so successful in connexion with the Cumberland Asso- 

 ciation, when the simple fact of his not being a Cumbrian by birth 

 would have been fatal to any merely active and zealous man. 



Dayid Thomas Ansted was born in London on the 5th Feb- 

 ruary, 1814, and, after education at a private school, entered the 

 University of Cambridge as a member of Jesus College. He was 

 32nd Wrangler in the year 1836, and proceeded to the degree of 

 M.A. in due course in 1839. About four years afterwards he was 

 elected to a fellowship on the Ley Foundation of Jesus College, 

 which he retained for about eight years. Li 1840 he was elected 

 Professor of Geology at King's College, London, which office he 

 resigned in 1853. For some time, from 1845, he held the 

 Lecturership on Geology at Addiscombe, and was also Professor 

 of Geology at the College of Civil Engineers, Putney. From 1844 

 to 1847 he was Vice-Secretary of the Geological Society and Editor 

 of the Quarterly Journal. He became a Fellow in 1838. He was 

 elected to the Fellowship of the Eoyal Society in 1844. In 1868 

 he was appointed Examiner in Physical Geography to the Science 

 and Art Department. 



By degrees his attention became diverted from the theoretic to 

 the practical aspect of his favourite study ; and for the last thirty 

 years of his life he acted professionally as a consulting geologist 

 and mining-engineer. For some time before his death he was in 

 failing health ; and he expired on the 13th May, 1880, at his 

 residence, Melton, near Woodbridge, Suffolk. 



