2 The American Geologist. January, i90o 
art in England his name is mentioned with that of the Bram- 
ckls, in connection with the potteries at Swinton, and in the 
district near Doncaster. The "Don Pottery" he buiU at Swin- 
ton a hundred years ago, still exists. Two of his sons were 
partly educated at the Jesuit college at Donai. His prompti- 
tude in sending for the boys at the outbreak of the war with 
h'rance saved them the fate of some of their fellow students, 
who were imprisoned. One of these sons, Joseph, was in after 
years the father of the subject of the present memoir. 
Joseph Green w-as himself of a speculative turn of mind. 
So irresistible was his natural inclination toward astronomical 
studies that when his friends were still wealthy and he had 
no immediate reason for choosing a profession, he voluntarily 
apprenticed himself to Jesse Ramsden, the then famous op- 
tician and maker of astronomical instruments in London. 
A sudden change in the circumstances of his father obliged 
him to forsake his intellectual hobby and seek employment 
in a mercantile house. Subsequently he went to Rio Janeiro, 
acquired property in sugar estates and became rich. During the 
rest of his life he suffered some vicissitudes of fortune, but 
in his library there was always a portrait of Jesse Ramsden. 
the bookshelves were filled with eighteenth century French 
literature and encumbered with microscopes, telescopes, vol- 
taic batteries and other engines of amateur science fashioned 
in his day. 
His eldest son, William Lowthian, was born in Dough- 
ty street, London, Sept. 13th, 18 19. The family after- 
wards removed to a small property called Woodfield, near 
Sw-inton. This last remnant of the old potter's family 
belongings was sold about the year 1844 to a railway 
company by W. L. Green himself, who characteristically in- 
vested the proceeds in a mechanical toy, a screw steamer. 
His father, who in the later years of his life had estab- 
lished a commercial house in Liverpool, was then dead. In 
that city William Green received his early education, which 
was completed at King William's College in the Isle of Man. 
There, at one of the annual college examinations, curi- 
ously enough to those who knew his apparently matter-of- 
fact disposition, he took the prize for English poem, the sub- 
■ject being "Castle Ruthen," a Danish ruin in the neighbor- 
