JOSEPH PRESTWICH. 665 



cal and physical conditions very similar to, if not identical with, those 

 of the present day." All geologists seek to interpret the past by the 

 light of the present; but while Uniformitarians (as they are called) 

 demand time unlimited, their opponents, sometimes spoken of as Catas- 

 tropbists, would rather infer a greater potency in the agents of upheaval 

 or denudation than grant an unlimited amount of time. 



As Prestwich puts it: "Not that time is in itself a difficulty, but a 

 time rate, assumed on very insufficient grounds, is used as a master 

 key, whether or not it fits, to unravel all difficulties. What if it were 

 suggested that the brick-built pyramid of Hawara had been laid brick 

 by brick by a single workman? Given time, this would not be beyond 

 the bounds of possibility; but Nature, like the Pharaohs, had greater 

 forces at her command to do the work better and more expeditiously 

 than is admitted by Uniformitarians." (Collected Papers, 1895, p. 2.) 

 He maintained that modern estimates of denudation and deposition 

 and of rates of upheaval and depression were no test of wh at happened 

 in the past; that, in fact, the potency of agents had diminished. Prefer- 

 ring to the Glacial period, in his inaugural lecture on "The past and 

 future of geology," delivered at Oxford in 1875, he thus expresses 

 himself: "This last great change in the long geological record is one of 

 so exceptional a nature that, as I have formerly elsewhere observed 

 (Phil. Trans., 1864, p. 305), it deeply impresses me with the belief of 

 great purpose and all- wise design in staying that progressive refrigera- 

 tion and contraction on which the movements of the crust of the earth 

 depend, and which has thus had imparted to it that rigidity and 

 stability which now render it so fit and suitable for the habitation of 

 civilized man; for, without that immobility, the slow and constantly 

 recurring changes would, apart from the rarer and greater catastrophes, 

 have rendered our rivers unnavigable, our harbors inaccessible, our 

 edifices insecure, our springs ever varying, and our climates ever 

 changing; and while some districts would have been gradually uplifted, 

 other whole countries must have been gradually submerged; and 

 against this inevitable destiny no human foresight could have pre- 

 vailed." 



His great text book on geology, to which we have alluded, will remain 

 as a monument of his zeal and untiring labor. On its completion he 

 resigned his professorship and retired to his quiet home among the 

 chalk hills of Kent. There, however, he maintained his interest in his 

 favorite science and continued to labor to the very end of his days. 

 Soon after leaving Oxford, in 1888, he was called upon, as our leading 

 geologist, to preside over the meeting of the International Geological 

 Congress, which then held its fourth session in London. 



The study of tlie drifts of the south and southeast of England now 

 absorbed most of his time, and he devoted more attention to the group- 

 ing of the later superficial deposits and to the great physical changes 

 to which they bear witness. His ideas on all these topics have not 



