Caleb Evans

Who was Caleb Evans?

Caleb Evans, was an English geologist.

Evans, born on 25 July 1831, was educated under Professor Key at University College School. The death of his father compelled him to leave school at an early age, and in 1846 he began work in a solicitor's office. In 1852 Evans was appointed a clerk in the chancery pay office, a post he held until 1882, when his health enforced his retirement. He never married; his residence was at Hampstead, where he lived with his brother and sisters. Evans commenced the study of geology by attending lectures delivered in 1855 by Professor Owen and Dr. Melville. In 1858 he began to collect fossils from the tertiary formations of the south of England, and formed during the next twenty-five years very complete sets illustrating the strata of the London district. He also investigated the strata of the Isle of Wight, Lyme Regis, Weymouth, Swanage, and Portsmouth.

In 1857 Evans took part in founding the Geologists' Association of London, of which he was for many years one of the most active members, and in 1867 he was elected a fellow of the Geological Society. He was fortunate in being able to take advantage of the operations in connection with the main drainage works in the south of London, which afforded opportunities for collecting fossils never likely to recur. He secured suites of specimens of fossil shells of great interest and rarity. Evans also did excellent work in studying the chalk. He made large collections of its fossils, and his paper ‘On some Sections of Chalk between Croydon and Oxted,’ read to the Geologists' Association in January 1870, marks the first English attempt to divide this immensely thick mass of pure white limestone into several zones, and to correlate these zones with those that continental geologists had already established.