280 Reviews — Memories of a Long Life. 



Memories of a Long Life. By T. G. Bonney, Sc.D., LL.D., 

 F.R.S. pp. vii+112. Cambridge: Metcalfe & Co., Ltd., 1921. 



T\R. BONNEY has composed a delightful book of reminiscences ; 

 -*-^ we wish it could have been longer. It traverses the whole of 

 the Victoriaa period, for the author's first recorded experience is 

 the booming of the guns of the Black Eock Fort when William IV 

 died. I'he first chapter deals with incidents of boyhood, and 

 contains a pleasing account of life in a small provincial town in 

 early Victorian times, and of Uppingham School, where the author 

 received " a more liberal education than schools of that day 

 generally provided ", and where he began to acquire an early taste 

 for geology by collecting fossils from the Upper Lias Clay and Lower 

 Oolite. Perhaps the most interesting chapters are those relating to 

 Cambridge, and it is instructive to compare the University life 

 at the time when Dr. Bonney was an andergraduate or a junior 

 fellow with that of the present day. Dr. Bonney is not one of 

 those who think things have changed generally for the worse, for 

 he holds the balance very evenly. As a Liberal, though not a Radical, 

 he was usually on the side of the reformers, but while holding that 

 on the whole the old order has changed for a better, he is emphatically 

 of opinion that some of the practices and customs of modern Cam- 

 bridge are regrettable innovations, and we gather the impression 

 that life at the University, while gaining in many ways, has suffered 

 in dignity and charm. In a chapter on " The Work and Play of 

 a Long Life ", the author describes certain of his travels and Alpine 

 experiences, and this is followed by records of some remarkable 

 meteorological phenomena. The last chapter is upon " Men 

 I have known ", and contains interesting reminiscences of Isaac 

 Todhunter, Adam Sedgwick, Charles Kingsley, and other famous 

 men. We take leave to correct one small mistake, and that in a 

 footnote. In referring to the tearing down of palings, etc., to supply 

 fuel for bonfires at undergraduates' " rags ", Dr. Bonney says : 

 " I have heard that the first of these outrages on law and good 

 manners was perpetrated in 1898, when the late Lord Kitchener 

 received an honorary degree." The writer of this notice has not 

 forgotten the " rag " in the spring of the previous year, when the 

 Senate threw out the proposal to confer titular degrees upon women, 

 on which occasion there was also a deplorable destraction of property. 



F. H. A. M. 



REPORTS AND PROCEEDINGS. 



Geologists' Association, 

 2,rd March, 1922. 



" The Geological Structure of North Devon ." By Dr. J. W. Evans, 

 LL.B., F.R.S., F.G.S. 



Description of the geological succession of beds and correlation 

 with other areas. Dip, cleavage, folding, faulting, and other 



