william bourke wright. 1876-1939

William Bourke Wright. 1876-1939Author(s): J. K. C.Source: The Irish Naturalists' Journal, Vol. 7, No. 9 (Mar., 1940), pp. 250-253Published by: Irish Naturalists' Journal Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25532991 .

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250 TirE luisir Nationalists' JoruxAL. [Vol. VJT.

SCOTTISH LOVAGE, LIGUSTICIM SCOTWUM LINN., IN DOWN AND ANTRIM.

Lhjutfixum scolictnn Linn, was shown to me on Lighthouse Island

(Copeiand Islands), on 12th July last, by Dr. E. H. Metcalf and J. A. S. Stendall. There were eight plants in all. This is confirmation of

Templeton's record "

On the rocks about Donaghadee and the Copeiand Isles, 1793."

I also saw this plant growing more plentifully on the cliffs on the north side of Sheep Island, Go. Antrim, on 16th July. It has previously been recorded from Ballintoy, Whitepark Bay, and Rathlin Island, but I believe Sheep Island is a new station.

Belfast. 23-10-39. ELEANOR E. BARRY.

EARLY BOTANICAL RECORD FOR CO. LONDONDERRY.

In Anthologia Hibernica for February, 1794, is published a letter written almost seventy years earlier by Robert limes, of Magilligan, to Dr. Nicholson, Bishop of Derry. A number of plants found in the

district are mentioned. One plant can easily be identified from the writer's description, which reads:?" A ranunculus that grows on our

highest rocks.: it flowers in May ; I take it to be the ranunculus alpinus betonicis folijs of Parkinson ; the leaves are very like those of betony, only very white on the under side ; it carries a flower of eight very

white shining leaves, yet when the leaves are fallen it carries an

exceeding beautiful white down." The foregoing entitles lnnes to the credit of being the first finder

of Dry as octopetala in the area dealt with in The Flora of the North Fast of Ireland. I think his name should be associated with the plant in the next supplement to that Flora.

Belfast. 20-11-39. E. N. CARROTHERS.

?-u

OBITUARY.

WILLIAM BOURKE WRIGHT. 1876-1939.

Plate 8.

Dr. W. B. Wright, lately of the Geological Survey, died from a heart attack on 11th October, 1939, at the age of 63 years.

William Bourke Wright was born in Dublin in 1876 and studied at Trinity College, Dublin. Through his mathematical studies he became interested in J. Croll's astronomical theory

which sought to explain the Ice Age by variations in the

eccentricity of the earth's orbit and the precession of the

equinoxes. This link with geology was fated to influence his career and future interests.

Wright joined the Geological Survey of Great Britain and Ireland in 1901. The survey in Ireland was then engaged in

revision, primarily with a view to issuing maps and memoirs of

the drifts which would be useful to the agriculturalist. Wright was fortunate in that he was able to take part in this drift

mapping in the districts of Dublin, Belfast, Cork and Limerick. His fortune was the greater as his work was done under the

general guidance and leadership of the late G. W. Lamplugh, then the most eminent glacialist on the British Survey.



The Ikisii Xatl'haijsts' Jofkxal.

Plate S.

P. 250.

William Bourke Wright. 1876-1939.



March, 1940.] Tiik Irish Naturalists' Journal. 251

In 1904, Wright went to the English Survey. Here he became

acquainted with the Millstone Grit and Coal Measures, which he was later to study more intensively in Ireland, England and Scotland. He also investigated the older drift which he had

already encountered about Cork.

In 1906, Wright transferred to the Scottish Survey which was then mapping the Tertiary igneous rocks of the Western Isles and the Coal Measures of Central Scotland. To both these

subjects he made important contributions. The days spent on the wonderful ancient volcano of Mull remained with him as

pleasant memories to the end of his life.

After four years in Scotland, Wright returned to the Irish

Survey, then under the inspiring directorship of the late Professor Grenville Cole. The Great War naturally directed the Survey's activities into practical channels. Among the investigations

which Wright carried out during the ten years he was now to

spend in his native country were the re-mapping of the Ballycastle coalfield (Memoir, 1924) and the supervision of the Washing Bay bore, west of Lough Neagh, that was sited to test the eastern extent of the Tyrone coalfield and its depth beneath the Mesozoic and newer cover. Although the bore failed in its immediate

object?it was abandoned while still in the plateau basalts?it

provided very useful information of the great depth of the

(Tertiary) Lough Neagh clays at this place. The revision of the

delightful Kerry area, represented on the special Killarney and Kenmare sheet, also fell to Wright's lot (Memoir, 1927).

In 1921, Wright was invited to return to the Geological Survey of Great Britain to superintend the branch office which under the new policy of decentralisation was to be established in Manchester. Until the close of his official career in 1938, his task was the supervision of the important re-mapping of the

Lancashire coalfield, both solid and drift. Although much of his time was inevitably devoted to the routine of the office and the

answering of innumerable enquiries, he was able to apply much

of his energy to the palaeontological aspects of the work, i.e. to the

zoning of the Millstone Grit by goniatites on lines already tested elsewhere, and to zoning the Coal Measures by freshwater

mussels collected personally at the coal face in numerous collieries.

These determinations not only enabled definite correlations of the various seams to be made but they led to the discovery of an

important seam where it had not previously been suspected.

Although Wright's official work on the various surveys was

outstanding, whether on the coalfields of Ireland, England and Scotland or on the Tertiary igneous rocks of Mull and north-east Ireland, his name will probably be best remembered for publica tions which were not directly connected with the Survey. Chance and his interest in the Glacial Period led to his investigation, with

H. B. Maufe, of the preglacial raised beach of southern Ireland, an investigation he was subsequently to extend to Scotland and its islands of Colonsay. Islay and Mull. He also threw further



252 TiiK Irish Naturalists' Journal. [Vol. VII.

light on the origin of drumlins, on the age and origin of the

Lough Neagh clays, and on the posthumous foldings in the post Carboniferous rocks of north-east Ireland.

Geology is most indebted to Wright for his well-known

Quaternary Ice Age, published in 1914, which was destined to

replace James Geikie's Great Ice Age, the glacial guide of previous generations. In this admirable work, Wright presented in an

eminently readable form a digest of modern thought as expressed in the bewildering and often inaccessible literature of glacial geology. It dealt with the glaciers and their activities and with the various phases through which the planet passed during the Ice Age. In its most original part, it elaborated a theory, subsequently termed the isokinetic theory, which sought to

explain the puzzling variations of the sea-level during Quaternary times, It ascribed them to the interaction of two forces,

the first a partial locking up of the sea-water in the ice-sheets, the second the slowT isostatic movements of the land which the ice

imposed by its load. Doubtless influenced by his association with

Lamplugh, an unrepentant monoglacialist, Wright presented rnonoglacialism in his book. Nevertheless, the weight of the evidence for warm mterglacial periods prevented him from

adopting the view consistently and in a new edition which

appeared in 1937 he definitely abandoned it. In this new edition, despite the pressure of his official duties, he contrived to

incorporate much new material and to give geologists a work on

glaciation which remains the best exposition on the subject in the English language.

In the last year of his life, Wright published his Tools and the Man. This most charming and delightful book portrays the

implements and life of Early Man in Europe and other parts of the Old World and his relation to the Ice Age and its closing stages.

Wright's contributions to geological knowledge were recog nised by the award of the Wollaston Fund by the Geological Society of London in 1916 and of the Sc.D. bv the Universitv of Dublin in 1928.

Wright was a man of many enthusiasms?Reid Moir's work

on Early Man in East Anglia, Einstein's theory of relativity, Wegener's theory of continental displacement were among the

many subjects that fascinated him. His enthusiasm, which

perhaps on occasion led him too far, often peeps out at us from

the pages of his books. His wide sympathies and zeal for dis cussion won his interest in the Manchester Literary and

Philosophical Society of which he was a devoted and efficient

honorary secretary for thirteen years.

Wright delighted in controversy. His criticisms, which were

outspoken, a result perhaps of his Irish impulsiveness, were liable to lead to temporary misunderstandings. Yet those who knew him knew of his broad humanity, his great unselfishness, and his

unfailing considerations for others. He set kindness to his fellow



March, 1940.] The Irish Naturalists' Journal. 253

travellers far above the intelligence with which he himself was so

richly endowed.

A sketch of Wright, however brief, would be inadequate that made no mention of the inspiration he drew from his family?his gifted daughter, at present a student at Newnham College, Cambridge, and his wife who shared his enthusiasms and interest in ideas and who brought to the common pool a knowledge of

geography and kindred subjects, J. K. C.

-n

THE GALLERY GRAVES OF CO. LONDONDERRY.

By I. J. Herring and A. M'L. May.

Dr. Mahr's 1937 survey of Irish Prehistory C1) revealed that

very little was known of the gallery graves of Ireland. Both the horned cairnC2) and the passage grave*3) cultures have been

adequately surveyed, but hitherto scanty attention has been

given to the probably more extensive class which we propose to discuss. Our survey will concentrate on Co. Derry, utilising the results of our excavations since 1936, Mr. May's examination

of the county megaliths, and the unpublished material of the first Ordnance Surveyors in the possession of the \Royal Irish

Academy. [Strictly speaking, horned cairns are also gallery graves. The latter term, however, is used in a more restricted

sense in this paper.] Gazetteer.

1. Largantea Td. Well Glass Spring Cairn. O.S. 6".

Sheet 10. Ui" E. 121" S. Altitude 400' O.D. Faces W.S.W. Rear of gallery destroyed. Double portal entrance. Internal division, jambs. Paved forecourt. Internal

vi cist

" containing

beakers. Cremation of 8 persons. Flints, mainly end-scrapers, and an arrow tip (broken). Bronze

" Palmella

" point. Bone

dagger plate. Pottery; beakers, probable proto-food vessel,

cordoned urn, and other bronze age types, one possible neolithic sherd.

2. Kilhoyle Td. Giant's Grave. O.S. 17. 121" W.

184" s- TOO' O.D. Total length of chambers 15'. Faces W.N.W. Entrance uncertain. Septal division. Paved gallery. U-shaped

peristalith probable. Cremation of 3 persons. Tanged and barbed arrowhead, hollow scraper and end-scrapers. Pottery; food

vessels and other bronze age types. 3. BoviELTd.

" Cloghnagalla." O.S. 31. 2J" S. 14J" E.

835' O.D. Total length of chambers 24'. Entrance uncertain. Jamb and lintel division. Corbelled roof. Faces W.S.W.

U-shaped peristalith. Cremation of female. Tanged and barbed arrowhead and hollow scrapers. Stone axe. Pottery; belongs to neolithic-bronze age overlap.

No. 1 exravafed hy I. .7. Herring, 1936. V.J.A.. Ill, 1, pp. Wt-m. \o. 1 I'.wava nl by 1. .1. Herring and A. M !.. Mav, 1937. /?ror.

/,\Y.//. ?{ /VS., 1937-1938, pp. :Vi-'?S.

No, 3 excavated by Herring and May, 1938. U,J. t., IH, 3, pp. il-.V).



william bourke wright. 1876-1939

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