DAVIS : PRO. PHILLIPS. 
19 
one of such vital importance to the success of all future work in 
the natural history of living* or fossil animals and plants, that I 
trust I shall be excused ; and the experience of Professor Phillips 
may serve a very useful purpose if it teaches us the lesson of 
patience and forbearance in passing judgment on what may, in 
the first instance, be thought extraordinary or even ridiculous 
theories, but which may eventually be proved to be founded on 
just and right principles, the result of life-long thought and 
experiment. 
In 1828, John Phillips was elected a Fellow of the Geological 
Society, and six years later, when 34 years of age, he was chosen as 
the Professor of Geology at King's College, London, and also a 
Fellow of the Royal Society. Ten years later again, in 1 844, he be- 
came the Professor of Geology at Trinity College, Dublin. During 
this period he was working at several branches of science in addition 
to geology. He made very valuable observations in meteorology, 
a science at that time little understood or appreciated. Astronomy 
also received some attention, and several papers on the planet 
Mars and other subjects are printed in the Proceedings of the Royal 
Society. As already stated, Phillips played an important part in 
organizing and managing the British Association ; for many years 
he was the secretary, and the first twenty-sevea volumes of its 
proceedings were produced under his editorship. In 1859 and '60, 
he was president of the Geological Society, and in 1865 of the 
British Association. Meanwhile he had taken the place of Dr. 
Buckland as Professor of Geology at Oxford, a position which he 
held during the remainder of his lifi^. 
Professor Phillips was an indefatigable worker. He never 
tired in his efforts to spread abroad that love of nature which so 
thoroughly imbued his own existence. By example and teaching, 
whether orally or with the pen, his single aim was the advance- 
ment of those branches of knowledge which had proved so 
ennobling to his own existence. Never married, he was wedded 
to his science, and in all his labours, whether as an original 
