MT. 54-55.] BOVEY TRACEY. 203 



is made known in a few lines to his friend John 

 Evans : 



10 KENT TERRACE, 27th Dec. 1866. 



MY DEAR EVANS, I have lost the best of sisters. She passed 

 away this morning tranquilly and without pain. I feel the loss 

 is to me irreparable. She was my object in life, and so good, 

 gentle, and affectionate. I feel assured of your sympathy. With 

 kind regards to Mrs Evans, I am, your affectionate and dis- 

 tressed friend, J. PRESTWICH. 



His kind sister Emily took the vacant place : she 

 arranged to remain and make a home for him, and soon 

 the weekly visits to Shoreham were resumed. Happily, 

 he was as usual overwhelmed with work, and in the 

 spring he led a little band of his old companions out 

 on a geological expedition. 



flaster Excursion, April 1867. J. P., God win- Austen, Gwyn- 

 Jeffreys, and Captain Galton ; joined at Plymouth by Spence 

 Bate. 



This expedition was an examination of the Bovey 

 Tracey district. The age of its interesting Lignite beds 

 had, until Professor Heer's determination of the plant 

 remains, been an unsettled question among geologists. 

 The accuracy of his opinion that the group of the Bovey 

 Lignites belonged to the Lower Miocene period has, 

 however, been questioned by Mr J. Starkie Gardner, 1 

 the leading authority on Tertiary Flora, who considers 

 the Bovey Tracey fossil plants to be of the same age as 

 those found at Bournemouth, and therefore to belong 

 to the Bagshot Series. 



Prestwich's object was not so much to explore the 

 Lignite beds as to examine the geological structure of 



1 British Eocene Flora, Monographs of the Palaeontographical Society, 

 vol. xxiii. (1879), p. 19. 



