417 
One genus of corals bears the name of Lonsdaleia and very 
appropriately so ; for no one in his day studied corals so syste- 
matically. (Geikie’s Murch., I. 232, 372.) 
Were it not for the diligence of Lonsdale I should not be able 
to exhibit the splendid series of U.G.S. sponges before you. For 
they were all collected by him and nearly all have his handwriting 
upon them indicating name and origin. We have other specimens 
in our Museum, but they are irremoveables. These before you 
are duplicates which were part of a collection arranged strati- 
graphically by Mr. Lonsdale, remaining undisturbed until 1890, 
when it was unfortunately removed to the vaults without due 
attention to the order of sequence. 
The best known locality in the area belonging to the Wilts 
U.G.S. is undoubtedly Chute farm, near Warminster, familiar to 
geologists for close on too years by the writings of Wm. Smith, 
Miss Benett, Mr. Davidson, Dr. Wright, Dr. Hinde and Mr. 
Jukes-Browne, with whom I gladly and gratefully associate Mr. 
Scanes of Maiden Bradley, knowing as I do from personal 
experience that no one has so thoroughly ransacked the Greensand 
and Chloritic Marlpits at Baycliff, Ryehill, Horningsham and 
Maiden Bradley itself. I refer to the 57th volume of the 
Geological Society’s Journal, issued Feb., 1901, where is given a 
list of 225 species of fossils found in those pits, including 17 
varieties of Sponges. Wm. Smith, “our good old father in 
geology,” as Murchison playfully called him (Geikie, I. 193), 
names Chute farm as the locality where he collected half of his 
Greensand fossils. Miss Ethelred Benett, whose life I am 
surprised not to find in the Dictionary of National Biography, but 
who was not forgotten by Canon Jackson in his ‘“ Eminent 
Ladies of Wiltshire History” (Wilts N. H. Mag., XX. 40), has 
given a list of 40 fossils—mostly Sponges—obtained from the 
same pit on Chute farm. In a letter addressed to Sir R. C. 
Hoare (dated Jan. 1, 1831) and printed in the 3rd vol. of his 
“ Modern Wiltshire” (p. 118) is the following paragraph from the 
