lxxil PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [vol. lxXV, 



Henry Robert Knipe, elected a Fellow in 1912, was born in 

 1855, and died at his residence in Tunbridge Wells on July 26th, 

 1918. Impressed, as all imaginative minds must be, by the slow 

 majestic history of the Earth and living things revealed in the 

 rocks, he attempted to express his feeling in poetic form, and 

 sought the aid of skilled and scientifically competent artists to 

 provide fitting illustrations. The combined result was a handsome 

 volume, published in 1905, entitled ' Nebula to Man ' ; and this 

 was followed in 1912 by a similarly-illustrated volume in prose, 

 ' Evolution in the Past,' in which the panorama of Life was deftly 

 reviewed. Works of this kind, appealing primarily to the imagi- 

 tion, have more influence than is generally recognized, in attracting 

 recruits to the severer studies which underlie them. 



John Watson, elected a Fellow so recently as 1917, was born 

 in the North of England in 1842, and spent most of his life at 

 Newcastle-on-Tyne, where he was Managing Director of Portland 

 Cement-Works. On retiring from business he went to live at 

 Cambridge, and spent his leisure in the study of building-stones, 

 marbles, and other structural materials, journeying far and wide 

 in search of specimens to make his collection as nearly complete as 

 possible. This collection he presented to the Sedgwick Museum, 

 and continued to devote himself to its arrangement, cataloguing, 

 and enlargement. Two descriptive catalogues written by him — 

 'British & Foreign Building-Stones' and 'British & Foreign 

 Marbles & other Ornamental Stones ' — have already been pub- 

 lished, and another, on Slates, Limes, & Cements, was in course 

 of preparation at the time of his death, which happened at Cambridge 

 on July 3rd, 1918, from the effects of a severe fall. In 1911 the 

 University of Cambridge conferred on him the honorary degree of 

 M.A., in recognition of his services to Economic Geology. 



William Edward Balston, who had been a Fellow since 1872, 

 was educated at Eton and at University College, Oxford, and was 

 deeply interested in all branches of Natural History. He was a 

 generous donor of valuable fossils, both to the British Museum 

 and to the Oxford University Museum, and in 1911 he gave to the 

 University of Oxford sufficient funds to enable Mr. J. A. Douglas 

 ±o spend two years in geological researches in Peru, chiefly along 

 the Arica-La Paz railroad then in course of construction. The 

 first results of Mr. Douglas's work were jmblished in our Quarterly 

 Journal in 1914. Mr. Balston was born at Maidstone on March 8th,* 

 1848, and died at Barvin, Potters Bar, on December 19th, 1918. 



[A. S. W.J 



