Page:Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Vol 60.djvu/565

 once accepted, or that the advocates of the old ideas were backward in their defence of them. For years controversy was long and occasionally loud; but so completely has it now died out, that the promoters of what were then new views occasionally find themselves at the present time in antagonism with the promoters of views newer still, for which they are not quite satisfied that there is as yet snfficient foundation.

At various intervals, from 1859 onwards, Mr. Prestwich wrote several papers relating to post-Pliocene deposits, including one of great importance, "On the Loess of the Valleys of the South of England and of the Somme and of the Seine," communicated to the Royal Society iu 1862. He had previously furnished to the Society an account of the discoveries of flint implements at Abbeville, Amiens, and Hoxne

In 1866 and 1867 Mr. Prestwich rendered valuable aid to the country by acting on the Royal Coal Commission, and on that on the Metropolitan Water Supply. In connection with the former he furnished an exhaustive, and at the same time suggestive, Report (published in 1871) "On the Probability of finding Coal under the Newer Formations of the South of England"-some of the anticipa- tions in which he lived to see at all events partially realised.

With regard to the latter subject, his book, The Water-bearing Strata of the Country arouud Loudon,' gave evidence of his capacity to speak

During all these years Mr. Prestwich had been actively engaged in business, and it is amazing to note tho amount of detailed and accurate geological work that he was able to accomplish. But about 1872 he managed to emancipate himself in a great measure from the trammels of trade, and in 1874 he was appointed to succeed the late Professor Phillips in the Chair of Geology at Oxford. He was there able to devote nearly the whole of his time to the prosecution of his favourite study, and to enlisting recruits for the science.

It is impossible in a notice of this kind to cite even the titles of his numerous papers, but especial mention may he made of his memoirs "On the Temperature of the Sea at various Depths below the Snrface," and "On the Origin of the Parallel Roads of Lochaber" (printed in the Philosophical Transactions '), as well as those on "Underground Temperatnre" and on the evidences of the "Sub- mergence of Western Enrope."

To the Institntion of Civil Engineers he communicated essays on the "Geological Conditions affecting the Constrnction of a Tunnel between England and France," and on the "Origin of the Chesil Beach," for which a Telford Medal was awarded him.

His papers read before the Geological Society were numerous. Among his later ones, those on "Volcanic Action," on the "Mundesley