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).]
SELBY, Viscount. [See Gully, William Court (1835-1909), speaker of the House of Commons.]
SELBY, THOMAS GUNN (1846–1910), Wesleyan missionary in China, born at New Radford near Nottingham on 5 June 1846, was the son of William Selby, engaged in the lace trade, by his wife Mary Gunn. He was educated at private schools at Nottingham and Derby. At the age of sixteen he preached his first sermon, and in 1865 became a student at the Wesleyan College, Richmond. In 1867 he entered the Wesleyan ministry, and left England in the following year to become a missionary in China. He remained there for the greater part of fifteen years. He was in charge of the Wesleyan mission at Fatshan (Canton province) until 1876, and after eighteen months in England started in 1878 the North River Mission at Shiu Chau Foo, also in the province of Canton. He made long and perilous pioneer journeys into the interior of the province. He spent a month in the island of Hainan disguised as a Chinaman. He also travelled in India, Palestine, and Egypt. He made a close study of the Chinese language and wrote a 'Life of Christ' (about 1890) in Chinese,
