Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/296

 Steam Navigation Company, of which he was managing director.

See's first association with political life began in November 1880, when he was returned to the legislative assembly of New South Wales as member for Grafton. That constituency he represented continuously until 1904, being re-elected eleven times. In 1885 he joined Mr. (afterwards Sir George) Dibbs's first ministry, in which he was postmaster-general from 7 Oct. to 22 Dec, being sworn a member of the executive council. As treasurer in the third Dibbs administration (23 Oct. 1891-2 Aug. 1894) he introduced and piloted through parliament the protectionist tariff of the government. On 12 Sept. 1899 See joined the government of Mr. (afterwards Sir William) Lyne as chief secretary and minister for defence, and arranged for the despatch of troops to South Africa during the Boer war. He succeeded Sir William Lyne, who took office in the federal government as premier on 27 March 1901, and thus became the first premier of New South Wales as a state in the federation. During his term of office he received King George V and Queen Mary when, as duke and duchess of Cornwall and York, they visited Australia in 1901. On 15 June 1904 he resigned office on private grounds, and retired from the legislative assembly, but accepted a seat in the legislative council, which he held till his death. He was mayor of Randwick for three years and president of the Royal Agricultural Society of New South Wales, and was director of numerous insurance and other business concerns. He was created K.C.M.G. on 26 June 1902. See died at his residence, 'Urara,' Randwick, on 31 Jan. 1907, and was buried in the Long Bay cemetery.

He married on 15 March 1876, at Randwick, Charlotte Mary, daughter of Samuel Matthews, of Devonshire,and had four sons and three daughters.

 SEELEY, HARRY GOVIER (1839–1909), geologist and palaeontologist, born in London on 18 Feb. 1839, was second son of Richard Hovill Seeley, goldsmith, by his second wife, Mary Govier, who was of Huguenot descent. Sir John Richard Seeley [q. v.], the historian, was his cousin. Privately educated, he as a youth became interested in natural history, attended lectures by Sir Andrew Crombie Ramsay [q. v.] and Edward Forbes [q. v.] at the Royal School of Mines, read Lyell's 'Principles of Geology,' began to collect fossils, and received help and encouragement from Samuel Pickworth Woodward [q. v.], in the geological department of the British Museum. He described two new species of chalk starfishes in 1858 (Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist.). In 1859 he was invited by Adam Sedgwick, professor of geology at Cambridge, to assist in the arrangement of the rocks and fossils in the Woodwardian Museum. Sedgwick found that Seeley 'could not only be trusted to arrange and increase the collection, but could occasionally take his place in the lecture-room' (, Life and Letters of Sedgwick, ii. 356). Seeley entered Sidney Sussex College, there continuing his general education, but he never graduated. His interests were concentrated on his geological work, devoting himself zealously to the local geology, to the invertebrate fossils of the Cambridge greensand or basement chalk, the Hunstanton red rock, familiarly known as the red chalk, and the lower greensand. He also studied the great fen clay formation, separating the Ampthill clay (as he termed it) and associated rock-beds of Corallian age from the Kimmeridge clay above and the Oxford clay below. He accompanied Sedgwick on excursions to the Isle of Wight, Weymouth, and the Kentish coast in 1864-5, and remained his assistant until 1871.

His first paper on vertebrata, published in 1864, dealt with the pterodactyle, and fossil reptilia thenceforth engrossed much of his attention. In 1869 he published the important 'Index to the Fossil Remains of Aves, Ornithosauria, and Reptilia' in the Woodwardian Museum. Questions in ancient physical geography also interested him. In 1865 he wrote 'On the Significance of the Sequence of Rocks and Fossils' (Geol. Mag.), while he discussed the relationship between pterodactyles and birds. In 1870 he founded the genus Ornithopsis on remains from the Wealden of 'a gigantic animal of the pterodactyle kind,' which, however, was afterwards proved to be dinosaurian.

In 1872 Seeley settled in London, devoting himself to literary work and lecturing. In 1876 he was appointed professor of geography and lecturer on geology in King's College, London, and also professor of geography and geology in Queen's College, London, where he became dean