OUtuary — William Talhot Aveline, F.G.8. 285 



the Wednesday morning. This enabled me to get a page of abstract 

 into the Report. The double rebuff was too marked to be mistaken. 

 I found the repugnance to the subject as strong at the Geological 

 Society as at the British Association, and with much regret was- 

 forced to drop it. At the time I had a yacht, an experimental tank, 

 a moorland river, and a mill leat ; and all the experts whose-opinion 

 was of value were favourably disposed towards my work, including 

 Sir G. G. Stokes, Lord Eayleigh, Dr. Sorby, and Mr. Gwyn Jeffreys, 



At the Bradford meeting, in 1900, I was interested to hear 

 Dr. Vaughan Cornish state publicly from the platform of Section 

 that he had only tripped me up once. And that happened to be 

 a quotation and an ambiguously worded passage. It was a trip 

 more than a stumble, 



I am not at all surprised at the opposition I encountered in petro- 

 logical work. That was simply a case of amateur methods of research- 

 versiis professorial. But the opposition to my work on the subject 

 for which I was elected to the General Committee, and which my 

 judges were scarcely qualified to condemn, I have never in the least 

 understood. The standing difficulty is this, that some of the most 

 important textbooks are misleading, and, indeed, I very really hear 

 anyone touch on the subject without their running foul of first 

 principles. In 1882 I submitted a paper to the Eoyal Society on 

 Kipple-mark. It was officially suggested to me that I had not 

 considered Dr. Sorby's work. Well, Dr. Sorby had supplied me 

 with a sheaf of his reprints, and I did not want to appear to be 

 criticising his observations on ' ripple-drift,' when I was investigating 

 another cause of ripple-mark, viz, wave-action. There are three 

 great principles which have to be considered, viz. : (1) the drifting 

 of sand by rivers and currents, as studied by Dr. Sorby ; (2) the 

 conveyance of sediment in suspension ; (3) the disturbance of the 

 already deposited sediment by waves of different sorts ; and (4) the 

 redistribution of this sediment by a great variety of currents. 

 I rejoice to see Professor Blake's papers, as they show that geologists 

 are now alive to the great importance of this subject, a subject which 

 is illustrated by every fragment of sedimentary rock cracked under 

 the geologist's hammer. 



It is scarcely worth while to refer to my own writings, as they are 

 fragmentary and scattered almost beyond my own knowledge. 

 I found that if I had got hold of a really important fact, that was 

 just the fact which, being unorthodox, would fail to get into print, 

 I happened to have the monopoly of a new source of information, an 

 experimental tank ; so my various judges were sceptical, and my 

 judges were all-powerful. A. E. Hunt. 



WILLIAM TALBOT AVELINE, F.G.S. 



Born 1822. Died May 12, 1903. 



The death of W. T. Aveline, at the age of 81, has removed one 

 of the earliest field-geologists attached to tlie staff of the Geological 



