﻿IxXXviii PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [May I908, 



Association, and we may congratulate our younger sister Society on 

 the distinction which they have conferred on successive volumes of 

 her Proceedings. 



As the Geological Society has its seat in London, it was natural 

 and fitting that the Tertiary deposits of the London Basin should 

 be made the subject of constant study on the part of the Fellows 

 resident in or near the capital. As far back as the year 1816, 

 Buckland, amidst his excursions into so many parts of the geological 

 domain, gave his attention to the Plastic Clay near Reading and 

 compared it with its equivalents in France.^ But among all the 

 early pioneers in the Tertiary geology of this country the foremost 

 place must be assigned to Thomas Webster, whose essay ' On the 

 Freshwater Formations of the Isle of Wight, with some Observations 

 on the Strata over the Chalk in the South-East Part of England,' is 

 contained in the second volume of the Transactions (1814) p. 161. 

 Eeferring to the then recent work of Cuvier and Brongniart on the 

 Paris Basin, and stating that his object was to describe a similar series 

 of formations in this country, he produced a singularly able memoir 

 in which the stratigraphy of the formations was worked out, together 

 with their organic remains. Long years afterwards Edward Forbes, 

 who had the art to lend an added interest to every subject which 

 he handled, returned with Bristow to the study of these Isle-of- 

 Wight Tertiary strata and gave to the Society his memorable paper 

 on the ' Fluvio-Marine Tertiaries of the Isle of Wight' (1853), with 

 a new reading of the stratigraphy.- It is interesting to remember 

 that two of Lyell's earliest papers were devoted to the Plastic Clay 

 of Dorset and to the freshwater strata of Hordwell Cliff, Hampshire, 

 to which attention had previously' been called by Webster.^ Many 

 years later, when successive editions of his 'Principles' and 

 ' Elements ' had made his classification of the Tertiary formations 

 widely known, he communicated to the Society (1852) his long and 

 detailed paper on the Tertiary strata of Belgium and French 

 Flanders/ 



But among the names of those who have enriched geological 

 science and increased the reputation of our Quarterly Journal by 

 their contributions to Tertiary geology, that of our late revered 

 colleague and esteemed friend Joseph Prestwich stands pre-eminent. 

 As far back as 1846' he began a series of papers on the older 



1 Trans, ser. 1, vol. iv, p. 277. 2 Q. J, ix. 259. 



^ Ibid. ser. 2, vol. ii, pp. 279, 287. -^ Q. J. viii, 277. 



' In the second volume of the Quailerly Journal. 



