XXXll rROCEEDDIGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETT. 



well as tlic mutations by which the present outline of our planet has 

 been brought about. 



The researches, however, by which the name of William Henry 

 Fitton will be most surely handed down to posterity are those by 

 which, during twelve active years of his life (from 1824 to 1836), 

 he laboriously developed the true descending order of succession from 

 the Chalk downwards into the Oolitic Pormations, as exhibited 

 in the south-east of England* and in the adjoining parts of France. 

 Before these labours commenced, geologists had confused notions 

 only as to the order of the strata beneath the Chalk, as well as of 

 the imbedded fossil remains of each stratum. It was Pitton who 

 made the Greensand Formations his own, by clearly defining the 

 position and character of the Upper and the Lower Greensands, as 

 separated by the Gault. On this point, the writer of this sketch may 

 well gratefully testify to the clearness and truthfulness of the views 

 of his lamented friend, and the hearty zeal with which they were 

 communicated ; for it was through the instruction given to him in 

 the field by Dr. Fitton, in 1825, that he was enabled to write his first 

 paper in the ' Transactions ' of this Society f. 



Ever striving to advance his favourite science. Dr. Fitton was the 

 zealous instructor not only of young geologists, but also of many 

 travellers and naval officers; and among those to whom he volunteered 

 to give practical lessons, Captain Phihp King, E.N., Admirals Sir 

 John FranMin and Sir George Back, as well as Sir John Eichard- 

 son, may be cited. He also devoted much of his time to the writings 

 of his friends, invariably labouring zealously to improve their com- 

 positions. 



Such gratuitous efforts, the care of a family, and other occupations 

 necessarily delayed the completion of his great work on the Green- 

 sand Formations ; but at length those memoirs were completed, both 

 by very elaborate details regarding the succession of these deposits 

 in various parts of England, in separating them from the iron- 

 sands of the inferior Wealden Formation, and also by showing how 

 that great freshwater deposit passes down into the Purbeck beds, 

 and from them into the Portland Eock. 



On various occasions of his life Dr. Fitton displayed much honesty 

 of purpose and a strong sense of the value of independence of cha- 

 racter. Of his associates who survive, Herschel and Babbage, as well 

 as Lyell and myself, can well remember when H. E. Highness the 

 Duke of Sussex was suddenly brought forward as a candidate for the 

 Chair of the Eoyal Society, that among the large body of men of 

 science who then stood forward to vindicate the rights of their order, 

 no one was a more ardent supporter of Herschel, in opposition to the 

 Eoyal Prince, than the warm-hearted and honest Fitton, united as 

 he then was with "WoUaston, Eobert Brown, and all the notabilities 

 in science. 



One of the claims of Dr. Fitton on the gratitude of geologists 

 is, that after having been the Secretary of the Society during somo 



* Trans. Geol. Soc, 2nd series, vol. iv. pp. 103 to 388. 

 t Trans. Geol. Soc., 2nd series, vol. ii. p. 97. 



