Obituary Notices. 
Xlll 
he had no longer strength to continue, hut with partial recovery 
he resumed work on the fourth edition of his Manual of Geology. 
We are told that from this time till the end he seldom worked 
longer than three hours a day. “ To himself, and still more to 
those about him,” his son remarks, “ it seemed many times as if 
the completion of this great work would have to be left to others ; 
but with the self-control born of a strong will and long experience, 
and with the never-failing watchful care of his life-long companion 
— without which his labours could never have been so productive, 
nor have been continued so long — he worked on slowly, doing 
each day only what he had strength for, and finally the labour was 
accomplished.” He finished it in February 1895. When we 
know that the volume — a large, closely-printed octavo of 1036 
pages — was re-written and re-arranged throughout, and necessarily 
involved the critical consideration of many new facts, theories, and 
hypotheses, we shall be ready to agree with his son, that the work 
is a remarkable performance for a man of eighty-two. He did not 
even now rest. Work of some kind was for him a necessity of 
existence. A month after his manual was finished, he had com- 
pleted the manuscript of a new edition of his Geological Story 
briefly Told , and then commenced work on a new edition of his 
Text-Book. But the end was now at hand. On April 13th he 
was able to go about as usual, and was as bright and vigorous 
of mind as ever. In the evening, however, he did not feel 
quite well, and next morning he did not rise. The uneasy feeling 
seemed to be passing away, but towards evening it returned, and 
after a very brief period of unconsciousness he quietly breathed 
his last. 
It is impossible, in a few words, to sum up the results achieved 
by this laborious and indefatigable student of science. He was an 
acknowledged master in at least three departments— Mineralogy, 
Geology, and Zoology ; and the broad generalisations which are 
encountered in his works prove him to have had “ a profoundly 
comprehensive view of nature as a whole.” His earliest investiga- 
tions, as we have seen, were mineralogical — the first edition of his 
System of Mineralogy having appeared so early as 1837. In this 
work he displayed that anxious desire to do full justice to his pre- 
decessors and contemporaries which distinguished his subsequent 
