Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Barrett, Lucas
BARRETT, LUCAS (1837–1862), geologist and naturalist, born 14 Nov. 1837, was the son of a London ironfounder, and was sent, at the age of ten, to Mr. Ashton's school at Royston, in Cambridgeshire. There his tastes were soon made evident by the pleasure which he took in collecting fossils from the chalk pits of the neighbourhood. Passing thence to University College school, he became a frequent visitor to the British Museum, and was a great favourite with the officers of the natural history department. In 1853 and the following year he completed his education by studying German and chemistry at Ebersdorf, and made a geological trip into Bavaria. By this time young Barrett's tastes were fully developed, and it was plain that natural history was to be the engrossing occupation of his life. At first the marine fauna of northern seas claimed his attention, and he accompanied Mr. m'Andrew (in 1855) in a dredging trip between Shetland and Norway. The next year found him similarly engaged on the coast of Greenland; while in 1857 he investigated the marine fauna of Vigo, on the north coast of Spain. The knowledge so obtained afterwards proved of great service to him; the collections of radiates, echinoderms, and mollusks made by him in these voyages were subsequently divided between the British Museum and the university of Cambridge.
In 1855 Barrett was appointed curator of the Woodwardian museum at Cambridge (in succession to m'Coy); here, in addition to developing and arranging the fine series of lias saurians collected by Hawkins, the chalk fossils of Dr. Young, and the local collections, he made his name known to geologists by discovering in 1858 the bones of birds in the phosphate bed of the upper greensand, near Cambridge, together with remains of large pterodactyles, which were afterwards described by Professor Owen. In the same year as that in which he received his Cambridge appointment he was elected a fellow of the Geological Society of London, being then only eighteen—an unprecedented circumstance. At Cambridge he was highly esteemed, especially by Professor Sedgwick, whose place as a lecturer on geology he frequently took. One excellent piece of work executed by Barrett during his Cambridge residence was a geological map of Cambridgeshire, which passed through several editions. But a great advancement was awaiting our still youthful geologist. In 1859 he received the appointment of director of the geological survey of Jamaica, a post worth 700l. per annum, and he at once set out for the colony, accompanied by his newly-married wife.
Arrived in Jamaica, Barrett set to work upon the study and mapping of its rocks with great energy and diligence. His chief discoveries were (1) the cretaceous age of the limestones forming part of the axial ridge (Blue Mountains) of the island; in these rocks Barrett found the remarkable shells called hippurites, and among them one form so different from all previously known that Dr. Woodward made it the type of a new genus, which he named ‘Barrettia’ in honour of the discoverer. (2) The ‘orbitoidal limestone,’ which had been previously considered to be of carboniferous age, was shown to form the base of the miocene formation. From these miocene beds Barrett sent home seventy-one species of shells and many corals, which were described by Mr. J. C. Moore and Dr. Duncan. But the pliocene rocks, which are of comparatively recent formation, now strongly attracted the new director's attention, especially with regard to the relationship of the fossils they contain to the animals now living in the surrounding seas. Here Barrett's dredging experience stood him in good service, and he began diligently to study the marine fauna of the coast of Jamaica. In spots where the water was deep he found many small shells which he had previously dredged up, both off the coast of Spain and in the northern seas; hence he was led to enunciate the opinion ‘that nine-tenths of the sea-bed, viz. the whole area beyond the hundred-fathom line, constitutes a single nearly uniform province all over the world.’
In 1862 Barrett was sent to England to act as commissioner for the colony at the International Exhibition. On his return to Jamaica he took with him a Heinke's diving dress, for the express object of investigating in person the corals of the Jamaican reefs. He used the dress successfully in shallow water, and then, eager to begin work, went down in deep water off Port Royal, with no other help than that afforded by a boat's crew of negroes. In half an hour his body floated lifeless to the surface. The exact nature of the mishap which caused his death could not be ascertained. He left one (posthumous) child, Arthur, born January 1863. Barrett has been compared by those who best knew him to Professor Edward Forbes, for his sweetness of disposition, good taste, and clear intelligence. He was not a good public lecturer, nor a very ready writer; but during his short life he really hardly had opportunity to develop his abilities in these respects. Eleven papers or memoirs proceeded from his pen; appearing either in the ‘Annals and Magazine of Natural History,’ or in the ‘Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society.’ One paper, on the genus Synapta, was written in conjunction with Dr. S. P. Woodward, and was published in the ‘Proceedings of the Zoological Society.’ Of his other writings the most important is his paper on the ‘Cretaceous Rocks of Jamaica,’ ‘Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society,’ 1860, xvi. 78.
[Quart. Jour. Geological Society, 1864, vol. xx., President's Address, p. xxxiii; The Geologist, 1863, vi. 60; The Critic, February 1863.]