The New International Encyclopædia/Selwyn, Alfred Richard Cecil

SELWYN, sĕl′wĭn, Alfred Richard Cecil (1824— ). An English geologist. He was born at Kilmington, Eng., was educated chiefly by private tutors in England and Switzerland, and in 1845 was appointed assistant geologist on the Geological Survey of Great Britain. From 1852 to 1869 he was director of the Geological Survey of Victoria, Australia. He also made a special study of the coal and gold fields of Tasmania and South Australia, and in 1850 was a Victorian commissioner of mines. He was director of the Canada Geological Survey from 1869 to 1895, when he was retired and pensioned. In 1896 he was president of the Royal Society of Canada. He published large contributions to the Geological and Natural History Survey of Canada (19 vols., 1869-94), of which work he was the editor.