Page:Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Vol 60.djvu/563

 By the death of Sir JosEPH PRESTWICH British geological science loses one of its oldest, as well as one of its most distinguished votaries. Descended from an old Lancashire family (in which, for Some cause or other, a baronetcy has lain dormant for some genera- tions), he was born at Pensbury, Clapham, on March 12, 1812. After some preliminary schooling he was sent to Paris, where he remained for two years in a school attached to the Collège Bourbon He was then transferred to Dr. Valpy's, at Reading, and finally entered University College, London, soon after its establishment. He there worked diligently in the chemical and natural philosophy classes under Dr. Turner and Dr. Lardner, availing himself also of the geological and mineralogical collections in the British Museum

While st at College he started a Society among his fellow students, each member of which had in his turn to deliver a lecture on chemistry or some branch of natural philosophy. This "Zetetical Society" had rooms of its own, and a small laboratory, in Surrey Street, Strand. It consisted of about fourteen members; but its existence was of limited duration. Mr. Prestwich himself was called away from it to join the business of his father, who was a well-known wine merchant in Mark Lane; and he remained closely connected with the house and business for nearly forty years. Happily, his commercial avocations to some degree aided, instead of restricting, his pursuit of geological studies. He had to make frequent visits to France and Belginm, in both of which countries he formed lasting friendships with the leading geologists and palsontologists of the day; and he made himself personally familiar with the actual strata and fossils which they had described. Not only so, but his bnsiness among the country connexions of the firm carried him to nearly every part of the United Kingdom, and the hours unclaimed by his engagements were enthusiastically devoted to the study of the local geology of the districts he visited. His comprehensive eye enabled him rapidly to appreciate and to grasp the leading features, topo- graphical and geological, of most of the areas which in those days possessed an exceptional geological interest; and those who in later years had the good fortune to accompany him to such spots were sur prised to find how retentive was his memory and how intimate was his acquaintance with every pit, quarry, and rock-section that in any way illnstrated the geological problem under consideration

His first published papers dealt with the fossil-bearing deposits of the neighbourhood of Gamrie, Banffshire-particnlarly with the strata containing ichthyolites, and with the shell-bearing layers of the Till— and the interuational character of his geological work was exhibited

For much that is here said I am indcbted to a memoir by Dr. Hemry Wood ward, F.R.S., published in the Geological Magazine,' 1893, p. 242. I have also to thank Professor Lapworth for kind assistance