HENRY

See also:

• HICKS, ELIAS (1748-1830)
• HENRY HICKS (1837-1899)
• HICKS, WILLIAM (1830-1883)

HICKS (1837-1899)  , British physician and geologist, was born on the 26th of May 1837 at St David's, in Pembroke-shire, where his father, Thomas Hicks, was a surgeon . He studied medicine at Guy's Hospital, London, qualifying as M.R.C.S. in 1862 . Returning to his native place he commenced a practice which he continued until 1871, when he removed to Hendon . He then devoted special attention to mental diseases, took the degree of M.D. at St Andrews in 1878, and continued his medical work until the close of his life . In Wales he had been attracted to geology by J . W . Salter (then palaeontologist to the Geological Survey), and his leisure time was given to the study of the older rocks and fossils of South Wales . In conjunction with Salter, he established in 1865 the Menevian group (Middle Cambrian) characterized by the trilobite Paradoxides . Subsequently Hicks contributed a series of important papers on the Cambrian and Lower Silurian rocks, and figured and described many new species of fossils . Later he worked at the Pre-Cambrian rocks of St David's, describing the Dimetian (granitoid rock) and the Pebidian (volcanic series), and his views, though contested, have been generally accepted . At Hendon Dr Hicks gave much attention to the local geology and also to the Pleistocene deposits of the Denbighshire caves . For a few years before his death he had laboured at the Devonian rocks .

With his keen

eye for fossils he detected organic remains in the Morte slates, previously regarded as unfossiliferous, and these he regarded as including representatives of Lower Devonian and Silurian . His papers were mostly published in the Geol . Mag. and Quart . _Iowa . Geol . Soc . He was elected F.R.S. in 1885, and president of the Geological Society of London 1896-1898 . He died at Hendon on the 18th of November 1899 .