JET. 35-36.] GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY CLUB. 65 



A few years previously Mr Lonsdale had resigned 

 office on account of his health ; but the same happy 

 relations continued and were ever maintained between 

 him and Joseph Prestwich. In a farewell note of 

 November 1842, written with "such expressions of 

 friendly good-bye as a note can convey," Mr Lonsdale 

 fervently wished that our geologist would be long 

 spared for the sake of his friends and for the progress 

 of science, and that every success would attend him 

 through life. Letters from this valued friend in after 

 years, on to 1861, testify to the pleasure it gave him 

 to receive occasional geological papers. His acknow- 

 ledgment of these "acceptable tokens of remembrance " 

 are given in grateful words. 



William Lonsdale was unquestionably one of the 

 old masters of geology. His memoir " On the Oolite 

 District of Bath " is one of the geological classics : 

 moreover, as remarked by Prestwich, and acknow- 

 ledged by others, his studies of fossil corals " led to 

 the establishment of the Devonian System." It fell 

 to the lot of Prestwich, while he was President of 

 the Geological Society, to record the death of his old 

 friend ; and this he did in affectionate and touching 

 terms. Lonsdale was born in 1794, and died in 1871. 



In 1848 Prestwich was elected a member of the 

 Geological Society Club, a private dining club which 

 was founded on November 5, 1824, by Greenough, 

 Warburton, Buckland, Fitton, Lyell, and twenty-six 

 other Fellows of the Geological Society. 



A letter of 4th January 1849 was in reply to Mr 

 Hussell Scott, who wished to know on scientific grounds 

 the reasons for and against trees being planted near 

 houses. Prestwich begins by saying that he had never 

 paid the subject more than general consideration, yet 



E 



