Rev. Professor T. G. Bonney, JD.Sc, F.B.S. 393 



thus also the revealer of the truth. Professor Bonney has never 

 shrunk from controversy, and has but little reason to regret it. 

 The exposure of the mistake which had been made over the nature of 

 the " Belemnite-bearing garnetiferous Calc-schist" was well worth 

 a fight ; but that the mistake should have been made at all diminishes 

 any surprise that might have been felt at the easy way in which one 

 limb of the great Glarus double-fold yielded at the first serious 

 assault, and was sheared off into the limbo of defunct hypotheses. 



The English Trias is perhaps one of the most interesting of our 

 systems, for, in spite of its scarcity in fossil remains, it offers many 

 fascinating problems to the explorer of the unknown ; the mystery 

 of the pebble beds in particular appeals to the imagination. Pro- 

 fessor Bonney's explanation of these as fluviatile deposits has now 

 become generally accepted, and Continental geologists, like Penck, 

 have extended his views to other cases ; nor, indeed, have all the 

 results which are likely to follow from this promising theory yet 

 been harvested. 



The history of coral atolls, one of the most important problems 

 now pressing for solution, has for long been a subject of interest to 

 Professor Bonney ; the summary of the arguments, for and against 

 Darwin's explanation, which he has given in an appendix to the last 

 edition of Darwin's " Coral Reefs " may be taken as a model of 

 judicial fairness. Subsequently, as Chairman of the Coral Reefs 

 Committee appointed by the Royal Society, he worked hard in the 

 interests of the various expeditions which were sent out from this 

 country and Australia to investigate the atoll of Funafuti, and from 

 which such valuable results have followed. 



Professor Bonney's petrographical work is too multifarious for 

 a short epitome ; its commencement belongs to the early period of 

 Zirkel and Rosenbusch, and is anterior to the publication of the 

 great classic, " Mineralogie Micrographique," of Fouque & Levy. 

 Among his earliest essays were explanations of the origin of 

 Serpentine and Luxullianite ; later he found an almost unexplored 

 field awaiting the microscope among the older igneous rocks of 

 North Wales ; from then onwards till the present we owe to him 

 a continuous succession of studies on igneous rocks from various 

 parts of the world, and among his most recent discoveries is that by 

 which the diamond has at length been traced to its true birthplace 

 and shown to be an original constituent of what is itself a somewhat 

 rare igneous rock, namely, eclogite. 



Needless to add that Professor Bonney has been a somewhat 

 extensive traveller: besides the Alps, his most familiar ground, he 

 has travelled in the Pyrenees, Auvergne, Normandy, Brittany, over 

 many parts of Germany and Italy, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and 

 Canada, which he visited on the occasion of the meeting of the 

 British Association in 1884. Every journey has had a definite 

 geological purpose, usually an attempt to solve some special problem ; 

 and the observations which were made were always recorded on the 

 spot, usually with illustrative sketches ; the notebooks in which 

 these are accumulated would make a small library. Professor Bonney 



