142 
Obituary — F. B. Meek. 
tion of the igneous rocks, geysers and gases of that remarkable 
region liave long been famous. In the sarne year appeared his 
paper on the submarine volcano of Yal di Noto ; while his riper 
reflections appeared in a memoir on the volcanic rocks of Sicily and 
Iceland in 1853. 
In 1865 he published his views respecting the causes of the 
change of climate since the commencement of what has been termed 
the Historie period, and expressed his belief that the interval known 
as the Ice Age was due to an alteration of the contour of the earth’s 
surface since Diluvial times. His labours, however, were not re- 
stricted to the field of Petrology. In 1856 he described what he 
regarded as a new mineral species from Borgarfiord, parastilbite, 
ditfering from epistilbite in some of its angular measurements ; and 
he published about the same time his examination of the crystalline 
form of boron. In Palasontology, again, we find him actively at 
work ; he described a fragment of a Saurian from the Coal-beds at 
Zwickau, and that of a fossil suake from Burlington, in Mississippi. 
It should be stated, moreover, that he was the close friend and ally 
of Gauss, and wrote the life of this eminent physicist and mathe- 
matician, which appeared at Gotha in 1856. 
While so ably filling the position of Professor of Mineralogy and 
Geology in the University of Göttingen, he devoted himself to 
writing a magnum opus on Etna, which occupied him tili a short time 
before his lamented death. The Chair which after the lapse of thirty 
years now becomes vacant has, it is stated, been offered to Prof. 
Tschermak, of Vienna. — W. F. 
FIELDING B. MEEK, 
Pal^ontologist, U.S.A. 
Born 10 Dec., 1817. Died 22 Dec., 1876. 
Mr. F. B. Meek was born in the city of Madison, Indiana, U.S. 
America, Dec. lOth, 1817. His grandparents were Irish Presby- 
terians, and emigrated to America from the county of Armagh, 
Ireland, about the year 1768. He spent his early days in Madison, 
where his father was a lawyer of considerable eminence ; but un- 
fortunately died when young Meek was only three years old, leaving 
his family in very moderate circumstances. From his earliest 
recollection he was interested in the Silurian fossils so abundant 
in the rocks of the neighbourhood of his home. He had never 
heard of Geology, but studied these remains with admiration and 
wonder as to their origin. On attaining his majority, by the advice 
of his friends, but against his own wislies, he commenced business 
as a merchant ; but, absorbed in his favourite pursuit, he neglected 
his avocation, and in the financial crisis of 1847 he lost his small 
Capital, on which he depended. 
In 1848 he seems to liave really commenced his career as a 
scientific man, being first employed as assistant to Dr. D. D. Owen, 
on the States Geological Surveys of Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. 
In 1852 he became the assistant of Prof. James Hall, the eminent 
palaiontologist of Albany, New York. Here he remained until 
