312 Bihliographical Notice. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE. 



Life and Letters of Sir Joseph Prestiuich, M.A., D.C.L., F.ll.S., Sfc. 

 Written and Edited by his Wife. With 12 Portraits and 16 other 

 Illustrations. 8vo, 441 pages. Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh 

 and London, 1899. 



Joseph Prestwich, born at Clapham, 12th March, 1812 (died at 

 Shoreham, Kent, 23rd June, 1896), was of good descent and 

 parentage, had good natural abilities, and was brought up in an 

 affectionate family circle, with the discipline of a well-directed home 

 and early schooling. Hence he was fairly well trained to appreciate 

 all opportunities of observing people and things, and gaining useful 

 experience in whatever line of life he had to follow. Part of his 

 Bchool-time was passed in France, pleasantly and with great advan- 

 tage to him subsequently, for he was as much at home with French 

 circles as with his English friends when Science had claimed him as 

 a devotee. As a youth in London he diligently followed his college 

 studies ; and the leisure hours of his young days were fully occa])ied 

 with systematic reading and with amateur work in physics and 

 chemistry. 



His father's business soon engaged his time and energies, both at 

 the office in Mark Lane and in travelling all over the kingdom 

 among customers in the spirit-aud-wine trade. Roadside diggings, 

 gravel-pits, and other excavations, also wells and springs, had 

 always excited his curiosity. By 1830 he had got together some 

 fossils and minerals, and formed a scrap-book of geological pictures, 

 sections, and quotations ; and when the family were staying at 

 Boulogne he geologized in the district, and took his young brother 

 to see some quarries there. Whilst at Broscley, in Shropshire, soon 

 afterwards, his attention was attracted to the coal-works of Coal- 

 brookdale : and at once he applied himself to understand and make 

 jdain to others the facts and conditions of the existence and origin 

 of this peculiar and valuable district. His bright intelligence and 

 wide grasp of mind enabled him not only to observe, but to generalize 

 on the subjects that occupied his thoughts. Hence the broad fields 

 of his research and the higlily useful results that came of his labours. 

 The Geological Society of London published his memoir in full, 

 with a good map and several plates of sections and fossils of the 

 Coal-measures of Coalbrookdale, and in 1849 awarded to the author 

 their WoJIaston Medal, for this and some subsequent memoirs on the 

 Tertiary Districts of Loudon and Hampshire. The above-mentioned 

 early work on the Coal-measures was the basis of his further study 

 of that important group of strata, and ultimately culminated in his 

 nationally important Reports (Royal Coal Commission, 1866-1871) 

 — (1) " On the Somerset and Gloucester Coal-Held," and (2) " On 

 the probability of finding Coal under the newer Formations in the 

 South of England," 



His long, we may say lifelong, study of the English and French 



