Miscellaneous Intelligence. 171 



In particular he defined and named the Thanet Sands and the 

 Woolwich and Reading Beds ; and he studied the sequence of 

 organic remains in the London clay, and the subdivisions of the 

 Bagshot series. In these researches he paid especial attention to 

 the lithological changes of the strata and to their fossils, so that 

 he could picture the physical conditions under which the several 

 formations were deposited. He extended his observations into 

 the Hampshire Basin, and showed that the Bognor beds formed 

 part of the London clay, and eventually he proceeded into France 

 and Belgium to correlate the subdivisions there made with those 

 he had established in this country. This great work among the 

 Eocene strata occupied much of his time for nearly twenty years, 

 and it served to fully establish his reputation not only as a keen 

 and accurate observer, but as a most philosophical geologist. 

 Another great achievement soon awaited Prestwich, and that was 

 the investigation of the valley gravels supposed to contain the 

 works of man in association with extinct mammalia. Boucher de 

 Perthes had in 184V announced such discoveries in the Somme 

 Valley, but they had received little attention. The somewhat 

 similar discoveries in Kent's Cavern, by MacEnery, had likewise 

 been neglected. Attention was, however, forcibly directed to the 

 subject by the discoveries made in Brixham Cave in 1858, and 

 Dr. Falconer then induced Prestwich to examine the evidence 

 brought forward in the valley of the Somme. The results of 

 these researches, which were carried on in conjunction with Sir 

 John Evans, and which were followed by a study of the English 

 evidence at Hoxne, in Suffolk, in the Ouse Valley, and elsewhere, 

 are well known. The contemporaneity of man with the Mam- 

 moth and other Pleistocene mammalia was fully established, and 

 the antiquity of man came to be the most absorbing topic of the 

 day. That vexed question still remains a matter under discus- 

 sion, although Prestwich, in some of his later articles, has 

 sought rather to reduce than to extend the time-limits of man's 

 existence. 



Subjects of practical importance from time to time engaged his 

 attention. In 1851 he published "A Geological Inquiry respect- 

 ing the Water-Bearing Strata of the country around London," a 

 work which at oncebecame the standard authority on the subject, 

 and has lately been reissued with appendices. The author took 

 a prominent part on the Royal Commission on Metropolitan 

 Water Supply in 1867, and his services were again in request on 

 the Royal Coal Commission, to the reports of which, published in 

 1871, he contributed accounts of the Bristol and Somerset Coal- 

 field, and of the probable extent of Coal Measures beneath the 

 Secondary rocks of the south and south-east of England. Agree- 

 ing generally with the conclusions of his friend Godwin-Austen, 

 he was led to infer that concealed coal-fields might extend from 

 Somersetshire eastwards to the neighborhood of Folkestone. 

 Subsequent explorations at Dover have shown the correctness of 

 these theoretical views. 



Am. Joue. Sci. — Fourth SbrieSj Yol. II, No. 8.— AugusTj 1896. 

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