382 Obituary—Ur. Henry Wiliam Bristow. 
Mr. Bristow was born on May 17th, 1817, and was educated 
at King’s College, London, where, in 1840-41, he obtained certificates 
of honour in the departments of civil engineering and applied 
science. His father, Major-General H. Bristow, belonged to an old 
Wiltshire family, and had served in the Peninsular War. 
Commencing Geological Survey work in the neighbourhood of 
Radnor, on the Old Red Sandstone and Silurian rocks, Mr. Bristow 
was shortly afterwards transferred to the Jurassic regions of Glouces- 
tershire and Somerset, mapping portions of the Cotteswold Hills near 
Wotton-under-Edge and Chipping Sodbury, and of the Oolitic district 
near Bath. In these areas he received guidance from John Phillips 
and William Lonsdale. Still later he proceeded to the south coast, 
and working eastwards of Lyme Regis, he personally surveyed the 
greater portions of Dorsetshire, and eventually much of Wiltshire, 
Hampshire, and the Isle of Wight, and parts of Berkshire, Sussex, 
the Wealden area, and eastern Hssex.! 
In the course of this extensive survey all the subdivisions of the 
Jurassic, Cretaceous, and Lower Tertiary strata came under notice ; 
and students who have subsequently paid attention to the structure of 
these tracts, whether along the fine cliff-sections of the Dorsetshire 
coast or inland over the Isle of Purbeck, the Ridgway, or Bridport, 
have borne testimony to the care and accuracy with which Mr. 
Bristow has depicted the geology. For it must be remembered 
that, excepting the small geological maps of Buckland and De la 
Beche, of Webster, Fitton, and Mauntell, the detailed structure of the 
district had all to be unravelled. Nor was this a simple and easy 
task, considering the unconformable overlaps (or oversteps), and the 
effects produced by anticlinal disturbances and faults. In fact, no 
one, without actual experience of the process of geological mapping, 
can fully realize the amount of physical toil and mental labour in- 
volved in tracing the geological boundaries and faults in a region 
where so many subdivisions occur, and where they appear often in 
irregular and unexpected juxtaposition. 
It is Mr. Bristow’s field-work which will remain as a lasting 
memorial of his devotion to geological science. If his literary work 
on the Survey appears small, it must be remembered that in the 
early days of the Survey, the geologists were moved rapidly on from 
place to place, so that unfortunately little time was allowed for 
making detailed notes of the strata, and still less for observing the 
mode of occurrence of the organic remains. Mr. Bristow’s intimate 
knowledge of the lithology of the stratified rocks is shown in the 
portions he contributed to the Descriptive Catalogue of the Rock 
Specimens in the Museum of Practical Geology. 
The preparation of the Survey maps, however, was supplemented 
by numerous sections, longitudinal and vertical, which Mr. Bristow 
constructed with much skill and neatness to illustrate and explain 
the geology of the regions he had surveyed. The Purbeck Beds 
were especially illustrated in this way, and while the paleontology 
1 The Sheets of the Geological Survey Map on which Mr. Bristow was principally 
engaged, are Nos. 1, 5, 7, 9, 10; 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 35, 36, and 56. 
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