GEORGE

See also:

• JULIUS

JULIUS POULETT

See also:

• SCROPE
• GEORGE JULIUS POULETT SCROPE (1797—1876)

SCROPE (1797—1876)  , English geologist and political economist, was born on the loth of March 1797. the second son of J . Poulett Thompson of Waverley Abbey, Surrey . He was educated at Harrow, and for a short time at Pembroke College, Oxford, but in 1816 he entered St John's College, Cambridge, graduated B.A. in 1821, and through the influence of E . D . Clarke and Sedgwick became interested in mineralogy and geology . During the winter of 1816—1817 he was at Naples, and was so keenly interested in Vesuvius that he renewed his studies of the volcano in 1818; and in the following year visited Etna and the Lipari Islands . In 1821 he married the daughter and heiress of William Scrope of Castle Combe, Wiltshire, and assumed her name; and he entered parliament in 1833 as M.P. for Stroud, retaining his seat until 1868 . Meanwhile he began to study the volcanic regions of Central France in 1821, and visited the Eifel district in 1823 . In 1825 he published Considerations on Volcanos, leading to the establishment of a new theory of the Earth, and in the following year was elected F.R.S . This earlier work was subsequently amplified and issued under the title of Volcanos (1862): an authoritative text-book of which a second edition was published ten years later . In 1827 he issued his classic Memoir on the Geology of Central France, including the Volcanic formations of Auvergne, the Velay and the Vivarais, a quarto volume illustrated by maps and plates . The substance of this was reproduced in a revised and somewhat more popular form in The Geology and extinct Volcanos of Central France (1858) .

Scrope was awarded the

Wollaston Medal by the Geological Society in 1867 . Among his other works was the History of the Manor and Ancient Barony of Castle Combe (printed for private circulation, 1852) . He died at Fairlawn near Cobham in Surrey on the 19th of January 1876 . Biography (with portrait) in Geol . Mag. for May 187o .