# Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Selwyn, Alfred Richard Cecil

​SELWYN, ALFRED RICHARD CECIL (1824–1902), geologist, born at Kilmington, Somersetshire, on 28 July 1824, was son of Townshend Selwyn, rector of Kilmington, vicar of Milton Clevedon, and a canon of Gloucester; his mother was Charlotte Sophia, daughter of Lord George Murray [q. v.], bishop of St. David's, and grand-daughter of John Murray, third duke of Atholl [q. v.]. First educated at home by private tutors, and afterwards in Switzerland, where he developed great interest in geology, he was in 1845 appointed an assistant geologist on the geological survey of Great Britain, and for seven years was actively engaged in the difficult mountainous districts of North Wales. He personally surveyed areas about Snowdon, Festiniog, Cader Idris, in the Lleyn promontory, and Anglesey, as well as portions of Shropshire. In 1850 he recognised evidence of unconformity in Anglesey between the Cambrian and an older series of schists, now admitted to be pre-Cambrian. The results of Selwyn's work in North Wales were embodied in the geological survey memoir by Sir Andrew Crombie Ramsay [q.v.] on 'The Geology of North Wales' (1866; 2nd edit. 1881); and the geological maps and sections which he prepared in conjunction with Ramsay and Joseph Beete Jukes [q. v.] were models of careful detailed work.
In July 1852 Selwyn was appointed director of the geological survey of Victoria, Australia. His work in Australia extended over sixteen years (1853-1869). Areas of special economic importance claimed his attention, and he himself gave much time to field-work. Studying the distribution of the gold-bearing 'drifts' or placer-deposits, he found that certain of the tertiary strata derived from the waste of the older rocks contained little or no gold, while other and later deposits were rich. The former proved to be of miocene age, and Selwyn concluded that the quartz-veins formed prior to that period were barren, whereas auriferous quartz-veins of later date furnished material for the rich gold-bearing gravels of Ballarat and Bendigo (Geol. Mag. 1866, p. 457). In addition to his official reports on the geology of Victoria, he prepared special reports on some of the coal-bearing strata and goldfields of Tasmania and South Australia. In 1869 Selwyn resigned his directorship owing to the refusal of the colonial legislature of Victoria to grant the funds necessary to carry on the survey in a satisfactory way. Thereupon from Dec. 1869 until 1894 he was, in succession to Sir William Edmond Logan [q. v.], director of the geological survey of Canada, where his work increased as various provinces and territories in British North America were added to the Dominion. His aim was to make the department of growing practical use to parliament and the public. Special attention was given to the goldfields and other mineral areas, to the building materials, soils, agriculture and sylviculture, and to water-supply. As in Australia so in Canada Selwyn personally engaged in field-work. He was an enthusiastic sportsman and often had to use gun and rod for a living when camping out.
Apart from his many official reports dealing with the progress of the survey and with the economic products, he published in 1881 an important paper in ​the ’Canadian Naturalist' on 'The Stratigraphy of the Quebec Group and the Older Crystalline Rocks of Canada.' He also rendered valuable services to the Canadian commissioners at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876, the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1878, and the Colonial and Indian Exhibition, London, 1886.
Selwyn was elected F.R.S. in 1874, was made LL.D. in 1881 by the McGill University, Montreal, and was appointed C.M.G. in 1886, An original fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (founded in 1882), he was president in 1896. The Murchison medal was awarded to him by the Geological Society of London in 1876, and the Clarke gold medal by the Royal Society of New South Wales in 1884.
Selwyn died at Vancouver, B.C., on 19 Oct. 1902. He married in 1852 Matilda Charlotte, daughter of Edward Selwyn, rector of Hemingford Abbots in Huntingdonshire ; three sons and a daughter survived him, one son, Percy H. Selwyn, being secretary of the Geological Survey of Canada.
Selwyn's few published works, apart from official reports, articles on Canada and Newfoundland in Stanford's 'Compendium of Geography and Travel' (1883), include : 1. ’Notes on the Physical Geography, Geology, and Mineralogy of Victoria' (with G. H. F. Ubich), Melbourne, 1866. 2. 'Descriptive Catalogue of a Collection of the Economic Minerals of Canada, and Notes on a Stratigraphical Collection of Rocks,' Montreal, 1876 (for the Philadelphia Exhibition).
[Memoirs by Dr. H. Woodward, with portrait, iu Geol. Mag. 1899, p. 49 ; by Dr. H. M. Ami in Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada, X. 1904, p. 173 (with portrait) ; by W. Whitaker in Proc. Roy. Soc. lxxv. 1905, p. 325 ; of. Letters, &c., of J. Beete Jukes, 1871, and Sir A. Geikie, Memoir of Sir A. C. Ramsay, 1895.]
H. B. W.