I.—Eminent Living Geologists

Extract

Thomas George Bonney was born July 27th, 1833, at Rugeley, Staffordshire. His family is of Huguenot origin, and thus affords yet another instance of the remarkable intellectual enrichment of our country which resulted from the religious persecutions in France. His father, the Rev. Thomas Bonney, son of the Rev. George Bonney, vicar of Sandon, and sometime Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, was a man of wide and varied interests, and a hard worker, in spite of feeble health; he was master of the Grammar School, Rugeley, and for many years ‘perpetual curate’ of Pipe Ridware, a very small parish about five miles from Rugeley. The church was rebuilt through his efforts, and he took great interest in primary education, acting for some time informally as Inspector of Schools in the Diocese. He married a daughter of Edward Smith, a Staffordshire man of independent means, and died in 1853, leaving a widow and ten children, of whom Professor Bonney, then just entering upon his second year at Cambridge, was the eldest. The family inherited some property, but the income it afforded was small for the education of so many.