170 Scientific Intelligence. 



Obituary. 





Sir Joseph Prestwich, D.C.L., F.R.S.,* the most eminent of 

 British geologists, has just passed away, and those who last 

 Saturday stood around his grave amid the chalk hills of his pleas- 

 ant country home at Shoreham, near Sevenoaks, felt that they 

 were paying a last tribute to a veteran who had outlived all the 

 associates of his prime, who had completed all his earthly tasks, 

 and had gone to rest full of honors, and revered by all who knew 

 him. 



Joseph Prestwich was born in 1812 at Clapham, and after 

 passing through elementary schools in London and in Paris, he 

 proceeded to the famous grammar school of Dr. Valpy at Reading, 

 and completed his education at University College in Gower 

 street. At this college his thoughts were directed to science by 

 the lectures of Edward Turner on chemistry and of Dionysius 

 Lardner on natural philosophy. Turner, moreover, introduced 

 the subjects of geology and mineralogy into his course, and 

 thereby Prestwich gained those first lessons which aroused his 

 interest and led him by force of circumstances to devote his 

 leisure to geological studies. Had he been free to take up a pro- 

 fession he might, indeed, have given his special attention to 

 chemistry. He was, however, destined to enter into commercial 

 life, and until he was sixty years of age he was busily engaged in 

 the city as a wine merchant. Assiduous and successful as a man 

 of business, he yet contrived, from his earliest years in the office, 

 to give great attention to geology, and he devoted all the leisure 

 he could command to this subject, first of all as a means of relax- 

 ation, and finally because his interests were centered in the study. 

 In early years his business-journeys enabled him to see and learn 

 much about the general geology of England and Scotland ; and 

 when still a youth he spent his holidays during two successive 

 years in studying the district of Coalbrook Dale in Shropshire, in 

 mapping the various strata exposed at th6 surface from the 

 Silurian rocks to the New Red Sandstone and Drifts, in marking 

 the lines of fault, in noting in detail the character of the Coal 

 Measures, and in gathering together the fossils from the several 

 formations. The masterly memoir which he wrote on this area 

 was communicated to the Geological Society of London in two 

 portions in 1834 and 1836, being completed when the author was 

 but twenty-four years of age. Meanwhile he had paid a visit to 

 the north of Scotland, and had given some account of the 

 ichthyolites of Gamrie in Banffshire, a task which he undertook 

 at the suggestion of Sir Roderick (then Mr.) Murchison. This 

 was his first paper published in the IVansactions of the Geological 

 Society, of which he had been elected a Fellow in 1833. 



Later on he came to devote his special attention to the Eocene 

 formations in the neighborhood of London, and in course of time 

 he thoroughly investigated the entire area of the London Basin. 



* This notice is quoted from Nature of July 2d. 



