304 
WILLIAMSON: JOHN WILLIAMSON. 
collection, further materials for a scientific study of Yorkshire g-eolog-y. 
The sources whence he obtained additional help when preparing his 
" Illustrations of the Geolog-y of Yorkshire," which appeared 
in 1829, is told in the preface to the third edition of that work, 
published in 1875. In it he says, "previous to 1824, I had, 
in company with the ' Father of English Geology,' my uncle, W. 
Smith, gathered fossils beneath the romantic cliffs which support 
the abbey (then almost entire) of Whitby, and the castle of Scar- 
borough. But in that year I had the good fortune to become known 
to two of the most valuable of all my early friends, — Mr. William 
Bean and Mr. John Williamson, and to profit by their admu-able 
collections of recent and fossil shells, Crustacea, Echinida, and Corals, 
dredged from the neighbouring sea, or hammered out of the neigh- 
bouring rocks." And again in his " Explanation of the plates," in 
the same edition (p. 321), Phillips says, "The specimens figured in 
the following plates were chiefly in the collections of the Yorkshire 
Museum, Mr. Bean, Mr. Williamson, Dr. Murray, and the author " ; 
and the constant repetition of his name in the next ten pages, shows 
how well these recognitions of Mr. Williamson's labours was 
deserved. 
The publication of the above woi'k brings me to a period when 
my own personal reminiscences avail me. My father had lost two 
boys before they were six years of age ; I fear from over teaching. 
Feeling terribly in his own case, the lack of education, he deter- 
mined that his lads should have such educational advantages as he 
could afford to bestow upon them. The result was that my two 
brothers, one younger and the other older than myself, died of 
Hydrocephalus before they were six years of age, and I narrowly 
escaped the same fate by being transferred from school to the 
house of a country farmer ; here the Eton Latin Grammar was ex- 
changed for stones in a tin canister, which I had daily to rattle in 
order to frighten away the birds from the ripening corn; an 
admirable scheme for keeping me in the open air. These dangers 
however, passed away, and on the appearance of Phillips' work, it 
was my good fortune, when about 1 2 years of age, to make my 
first acquaintance with the fossils in my father's private museum. 
