continued to prosecute it with a breadth, 

 originality and success which show him 

 to have been the most accomplished Eng- 

 lish geologist of his time. He was in no 

 hurry to publish his observations though 

 ever willing to communicate them to his 

 friends, and they have come to light al- 

 most by accident since his death. He 

 well deserves to be ranked as one of the 

 founders of Geology in England. 



But his "scientific activities, extending 

 beyond the geological sphere, ranged 

 far and wide through the physical 

 sciences, and his leisure hours at Thorn- 

 hill were largely devoted to personal 

 research and experiment in that wide 

 domain. Probably a good deal of his 

 original work was never published, but 

 his papers, which found an appropriate 

 place in the Philosophical Transactions \ 

 have given him a title to high rank among 

 the natural philosophers of the eighteenth 

 century. To the consideration of this side 

 of his achievement I shall now turn. 



