Rev. James Clifton Ward, F.G.S

Abstract

OUR geological readers will learn with sincere regret that one of the most earnest of the band of “workers” in this country passed away on April 15, aged 37. Early adducing a taste for science, Mr. Ward was sent to the Royal School of Mines in 1861, studying in the Geological Division, and obtaining the Associateship in 1864. In the following year he joined the staff of the Government Geological Survey, and was sent down to the Yorkshire coalfield, in the survey of which he took an active part. Underthe superintendence of Prof. Green he contributed to the elucidation of the geology of seven ordnance quarter sheets, including at least twenty-three maps of Yorkshire, on the scale of 6 inches to the mile, to many Horizontal and Vertical Sections explaining the structure of the coalfield, and furnished information included in the Survey Memoirs on the Dewsbury and Huddersfield district, 88, N.E., in 1871, the Burnly Coalfields in 1875, and the “Geology Of the Yorkshire Coalfield” in 1878, and was called before the Royal Coal Commission to give to them the results of his labours in that coalfield. In 1869 Mr. Ward was transferred to the Survey of the English Lake District, then commencing under the superintendence of Mr. Aveline, and we henceforth see Mr. Ward in a new light. Hitherto conscientious work and indefatigable industry had alone characterised him; but so soon as he was surrounded by the scenery of the Lakes, and breathed its exhilarating atmosphere, he developed, in addition to these qualities, a rare appreciation of its beauties, alike present in sunshine and in storm, not far removed from that “being one with nature” that is so marked a characteristic of the little band of poets which, in the time that has just gone by, Tiave rendered this district, ctepsje grouai for the student of English literature. Keenly enjoying the impressions received from moor and mountain, the search after their Origin, the elucidation of their past, and the restoration of their physical geology were ever present in his mind, pursued with a zest and an industry that only can be realised by those who have witnessed it. To pick up a line or clear up a doubtful point he would retrace his steps up the roughest and steepest ground, after a long day's tramp, at a speed that proved the curiosity and interest that he felt in its solution, and after the longest and hardest day in the field we have seen him working at his microscope into the small hours of the night, whilst early the next morning he was ever ready for fresh expeditions, in which no fatigue could cheek his interest and no discomfort try his good nature. The results of his labours in the Lake District are embodied in the “Keswick Quarter-Sheet” of the Geological Survey and the accompanying memoir on “The Geology of the Northern Part of the English Lake District,” published in 1876, and in various official maps and sections, as well as in papers in the Journal of the Geological Society, the Geological Magazine, -Popular Science Review, Science Gossip, and NATURE. To more fully understand the history of the volcanic rocks of his favourite Borrowdale, he undertook a journey to Italy to study Vesuvius and other volcanoes in that region. He spared neither time, cost, nor labour in microscopic sections of rocks and their chemical analyses, to aid his results in the field, and though some German petrographers have questioned some of his, results worked out in the laboratory, we doubt whether any future observer will be able to suggest any improvement or change in the elaborate network of boundary lines covering the maps of the northern Lake District.