JUKES, JOSEPH BEETE (1811-1869), English geologist, was born at Summer
Hill, near Birmingham, on the 10th of October 1811. He took his degree
at Cambridge in 1836. He began the study of geology under Sedgwick, and
in 1839 was appointed geological surveyor of Newfoundland. He returned
to England at the end of 1840, and in 1842 sailed as naturalist on board
H.M.S. "Fly," despatched to survey Torres Strait, New Guinea, and the
east coast of Australia. Jukes landed in England again in June 1846, and
in August received an appointment on the geological survey of Great
Britain. The district to which he was first sent was North Wales. In
1847 he commenced the survey of the South Staffordshire coal-field and
continued this work during successive years after the close of
field-work in Wales. The results were published in his _Geology of the
South Staffordshire Coal-field_ (1853; 2nd ed. 1859), a work remarkable
for its accuracy and philosophic treatment. In 1850 he accepted the post
of local director of the geological survey of Ireland. The exhausting
nature of this work slowly but surely wore out even his robust
constitution and on the 29th of July 1869 he died. For many years he
lectured as professor of geology, first at the Royal Dublin Society's
Museum of Irish Industry, and afterwards at the Royal College of Science
in Dublin. He was an admirable teacher, and his _Student's Manual_ was
the favoured textbook of British students for many years. During his
residence in Ireland he wrote an article "On the Mode of Formation of
some of the River-valleys in the South of Ireland" (_Quarterly Journ.
Geol. Soc._ 1862), and in this now classic essay he first clearly
sketched the origin and development of rivers. In later years he devoted
much attention to the relations between the Devonian system and the
Carboniferous rocks and Old Red Sandstone.
Jukes wrote many papers that were printed in the London and Dublin
geological journals and other periodicals. He edited, and in great
measure wrote, forty-two memoirs explanatory of the maps of the south,
east and west of Ireland, and prepared a geological map of Ireland on
a scale of 8 m. to an inch. He was also the author of _Excursions in
and about Newfoundland_ (2 vols., 1842); _Narrative of the Surveying
Voyage of H. M. S. "Fly"_ (2 vols., 1847); _A Sketch of the Physical
Structure of Australia_ (1850); _Popular Physical Geology_ (1853);
_Student's Manual of Geology_ (1857; 2nd ed. 1862; a later edition was
revised by A. Geikie, 1872); the article "Geology" in the _Ency.
Brit._ 8th ed. (1858) and _School Manual of Geology_ (1863). See
_Letters, &c., of J. Beete Jukes, edited, with Connecting Memorial
Notes, by his Sister_ (C. A. Browne) (1871), to which is added a
chronological list of Jukes's writings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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