336 



judgment considered it desii-able, and his judgment was always 

 regarded as a sound one in such cases.* 



Though absent in London his Bath friends did not forget him. 

 In the Fourth Eeport of the Institution, p. 9, we again find 

 a resolution of special thanks to Mr. Lonsdale, and in 1830 his name 

 entered as an honorary " proprietor " of the Institution, a com- 

 pliment which, as far as I know, has been accorded to no one else. 

 Nor did he, on his part, forget the Institution at Bath, for he 

 regularly presented copies of the publications of the Geological 

 Society to the library. 



At the request of the Council of the Geological Society he 

 undertook an investigation of the Oolite districts of Gloucester- 

 shire. 



Lonsdale on four occasions received the Wollaston fund, and on 

 one occasion the Wollaston medal. I prefer to put these and other 

 notices of him at the anniversary meetings of the Geological Society 

 in their sequence, that they may be the more readily referred to in 

 the publications of the Society. 



The first was in 1832 (see " Proceedings," vol. 1, p. 362), 

 when Murchisou announced that the Council had awarded the 

 Wollaston fund to him. The object of this donation was to assist 

 him at his further examination of the Oolitic formations. 



* Since the above was written the President of the Geological Society in 

 his presidential address to the Society, remarks : — " Those who remember the 

 Society in the days of his Assistant-Secretaryship will never forget the 

 unceasing and manifold labours with which he devoted himself to its interests, 

 nor the patient and valuable assistance he was ever ready to render to such as 

 sought his counsel and advice. Too many nights, indeed, were, 1 know, given 

 up by him to those disinterested and friendly offices. The unseen hand and 

 the thoughtful head may be felt and recognized in many of the important 

 papers which then appeared in our 'Transactions.' Added to a great 

 knowledge of geology and palaeontology, Wm, Lonsdale was endowed with 

 extreme caution, and had a keen sense of the importance of using, in scientific 

 papers especially, as few words as possible, whence in many cases a free use 

 of scissors and brush whenever allowed — a use, in fact, generally freely 

 granted, by many of the then great leaders in geology, in consequence of 

 their high opinion of the sound judgment and discrimination of their able 

 Assistant-Secretary. ' ' 



