482 Eminent Living Geologists — Professor W. W. Watts. 



lecture to an audience of school-girls at Southport. He remained on 

 the University Extension till 1891, lecturing on Physical Geography 

 and Prehistoric Archseology, as well as on Geology and subjects 

 closely related to it, at many towns in the north, west, and south- 

 east of England as well as in the Midlands. 



In 1882 Watts assisted J. E. Man* to fill the post of Professor 

 Green during his absence from Leeds ; in 1883-4 he acted as Deputy- 

 Professor at the Mason College, Birmingham, during the illness of 

 Professor Lapworth ; and in 1888 as deputy at Oxford after the 

 resignation of Professor Prestwich and before Professor Green was 

 able to begin his work there. He also lectured during two bye-terms 

 at Cambridge and obtained some experience of class-teaching at his 

 old school, thus becoming acquainted with most sides of teaching work 

 and with the methods and conditions of many men and institutions. 



In 1891 the wander-period closed and Watts accepted an appoint- 

 ment on the staff of the Irish Geological Survey offered him by 

 Sir Archibald Geikie. In addition to routine work he was specially 

 charged with the care of the Survey Collections in the National 

 Museum in Dublin, an unrivalled opportunity to become acquainted 

 with the geology of the country. When this work was completed he 

 was transferred to the English Survey, where he acted as petrographer 

 in the room of Dr. Hatch until 1897. 



In that year an assistant-professorship was founded to relieve 

 Professor Lapworth of part of his routine work at the Mason College. 

 Watts was selected for this post and for nine years had the 

 privilege of assisting Lapworth in the teaching of geology and 

 geography. In 1904 he was given a seat on the Senate and the title 

 of Professor of Geography in the newly constituted University of 

 Birmingham. 



In 1906, on the resignation of Professor Judd from his chair at the 

 Royal College of Science in London, the Crown appointed Watts to the 

 vacant chair. Later the College was, with the Royal School of Mines 

 and the Central Technical College, reconstituted as the Imperial College 

 of Science and Technology and Watts was continued as Professor. 



He was married in 1889 to Louisa Adelaide, the daughter of 

 Colonel H. A. Atchison, who died in 1891, and in 1894 to Rachel, 

 the widow of Arthur Turnour Atchison, Assistant Secretary to the 

 British Association. 



Watts' first original work was the outcome of a remark dropped 

 by a geologist on seeing the Breidden Hills for the first time from the 

 Wrekin, that they were "merely a mass of amygdaloidal basalt". 

 The fortunate discovery of andesitic tuffs and of fossils gave a clue to 

 the age and succession of the rocks and resulted in a paper published 

 by the Geological Society. Professor Lapworth determined the 

 graptolites found and permitted Watts to share in many weeks of 

 delightful field-work on the cognate igneous rocks of the neighbouring 

 Shelve district, culminating in the discovery that the igneous masses 

 were of laccolite or, as it would now be termed, phacolite form. 

 After this work Lapworth passed down the sequence to Church 

 Stretton and the Longmynd and Watts upward to the Silurian 

 deposits of the Long Mountain, but the two came together on more 



