# Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Seeley, Harry Govier

​SEELEY, HARRY GOVIER (1839–1909), geologist and palaeontologist, born in London on 18 Feb. 1839, was second son of Richard Hovill Seeley, goldsmith, by his second wife, Mary Govier, who was of Huguenot descent. Sir John Richard Seeley [q. v.], the historian, was his cousin. Privately educated, he as a youth became interested in natural history, attended lectures by Sir Andrew Crombie Ramsay [q. v.] and Edward Forbes [q. v.] at the Royal School of Mines, read Lyell's 'Principles of Geology,' began to collect fossils, and received help and encouragement from Samuel Pickworth Woodward [q. v.], in the geological department of the British Museum. He described two new species of chalk starfishes in 1858 (Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist.). In 1859 he was invited by Adam Sedgwick, professor of geology at Cambridge, to assist in the arrangement of the rocks and fossils in the Woodwardian Museum. Sedgwick found that Seeley 'could not only be trusted to arrange and increase the collection, but could occasionally take his place in the lecture-room' (Clark and Hughes, Life and Letters of Sedgwick, ii. 356). Seeley entered Sidney Sussex College, there continuing his general education, but he never graduated. His interests were concentrated on his geological work, devoting himself zealously to the local geology, to the invertebrate fossils of the Cambridge greensand or basement chalk, the Hunstanton red rock, familiarly known as the red chalk, and the lower greensand. He also studied the great fen clay formation, separating the Ampthill clay (as he termed it) and associated rock-beds of Corallian age from the Kimmeridge clay above and the Oxford clay below. He accompanied Sedgwick on excursions to the Isle of Wight, Weymouth, and the Kentish coast in 1864-5, and remained his assistant until 1871.
His first paper on vertebrata, published in 1864, dealt with the pterodactyle, and fossil reptilia thenceforth engrossed much of his attention. In 1869 he published the important 'Index to the Fossil Remains of Aves, Ornithosauria, and Reptilia' in the Woodwardian Museum. Questions in ancient physical geography also interested him. In 1865 he wrote 'On the Significance of the Sequence of Rocks and Fossils' (Geol. Mag.), while he discussed the relationship between pterodactyles and birds. In 1870 he founded the genus Ornithopsis on remains from the Wealden of 'a gigantic animal of the pterodactyle kind,' which, however, was afterwards proved to be dinosaurian.
In 1872 Seeley settled in London, devoting himself to literary work and lecturing. In 1876 he was appointed professor of geography and lecturer on geology in King's College, London, and also professor of geography and geology in Queen's College, London, where he became dean ​in 1881. In 1896 he succeeded to the chair of geology and mineralogy at King's College. In 1885 he formed the London Geological Field Class, conducting summer excursions in and around the metropolis. During 1880-90 he lectured for the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching; and in 1890 he became lecturer and a year later professor of geology and mineralogy in the Royal Indian Engineering College at Cooper's Hill, a post he occupied until 1905. As a speaker he was deliberate and monotonous in articulation, but he taught clearly the methods as well as the results of research.
This educational work left time for much original research. During vacations he visited all the principal public museums in Europe for the special study of fossil reptilia, and he contributed descriptions of new points of structure and of new species of amphibians, reptiles, birds, and other vertebrate, to scientific societies and magazines. Thus in 1874 he described a new ichthyosaurian genus from the Oxford clay under the name Ophthalmosaurus; in 1880 he called attention to evidence that the Ichthyosaurus was viviparous, and in 1887 he pointed out that the young of some plesiosaurs were similarly developed. Aided by a grant from the Royal Society, he devoted himself to a study of the structure of the anomodont reptilia, to which Sir Richard Owen [q. v.] had already given special attention. These fossil reptiles supply links, as he showed, between the older types of amphibia and the later reptilia and mammalia. He journeyed to Cape Colony and investigated the geological horizons whence anomodonts had been obtained, and was fortunate in finding in the Karroo a practically complete skeleton of Pareiasaurus, as well as many other interesting remains. He delivered in 1887 the Royal Society's Croonian lecture 'On Pareiasaurus bombidens (Owen) and the Significance of its Affinities to Amphibians, Reptiles, and Mammals,' and in 1888 he commenced the publication in the 'Philosophical Transactions' of 'Researches on the structure, organisation, and classification of the Fossil Reptilia.' In succeeding parts of this, his most important contribution to palaeontology (10 parts, 1888-96), he dealt specially with the results of his South African work.
Seeley, who was a member of numerous scientific societies, was elected F.R.S. in 1879; he was awarded the Lyell medal in 1885 by the Geological Society, and became a fellow of King's College, London, in 1905. He died in Kensington. London, on 8 Jan. 1909, and was buried at Brookwood cemetery. Seeley married in 1872 Eleonora Jane, only daughter of William Mitchell, of Bath. His wife, who received a civil list pension of 70l. in July 1910, assisted him in his scientific work. Their family consisted of four daughters, the eldest of whom, Maud, was married in 1894 to Dr. Arthur Smith Woodward, F.R.S., now keeper of the geological department of the British Museum (natural history).
Seeley's published works include: 1. 'The Ornithosauria,' 1870. 2. 'Physical Geology and Palaeontology,' being part i. of a second edition (entirely rewritten) of John Phillips' 'Manual of Geology,' 1885 (issued 1884). 3. 'The Freshwater Fishes of Europe,' 1886. 4. 'Factors in Life. Three Lectures on Health, Food, Education' (delivered 1884), 1887. 5. 'Handbook of the London Geological Field Class,’ 1891. 6. 'Story of the Earth in Past Ages,' 1895. 7. 'Dragons of the Air: an account of Extinct Flying Reptiles,’ 1901.
[Geol. Mag. 1907, p. 241 (with portrait and bibliographv); Men and Women of the Time, 1899; Quart. Journ. Geol. Sec. lxv. 1909, p. lxx; Proc. Roy. Soc. lxxxiii. B. p. xv. 1911 (memoir by Dr. A. S. Woodward).]
H. B. W.