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IX MEMORIAM : JOHN HENRY HOWARTH. 
to both these friends, the late J. J. Wilkinson, of Skipton, had also a 
finger, is among the rarities of local typography. 
Howarth's interests in Geology were wide, and his judgments 
always useful, but it was chiefly as the careful and discriminating 
observer and recorder of ice-borne boulders that his chief service to 
Yorkshire Geology was rendered. 
A Yorkshire Boulder Committee was set up in November, 1886, to 
remove the reproach from the county that in fourteen years only 
seven reports on erratics had been sent to the British Association 
Committee. Year by year, under successive secretaries, the Committee 
continued its labours, until, in 1896, on the death of its very active 
and competent Secretary, Thomas Tate, Howarth was induced to add 
to the labours of his busy life the duties of Secretary. His sound 
knowledge of petrological methods enabled him to sort out and appraise 
at their proper value reports that came in from local workers who had 
not this special qualification. This is made very manifest when the 
Boulder Committee's reports for the years after Howarth's assumption 
of the secretariate are compared with those of early years. Not only 
is there a great increase in volume, but along with greater reticence in 
the attribution of some erratics a firmer touch is manifest in regard to 
others. Thus in pre-Howarth days all dark-grained rocks were Whin 
Sill "; on the other hand, thanks largely to Howarth's support, the 
Yorkshire Geological Society, which he had joined in 1890, made long 
excursions to places likely to have contributed to the tale of far- 
travelled rocks, and we find accordingly records of rocks from the 
Lake District, the Vale of Eden, the Cheviots and Melrose (where 
Howarth presided over the Meeting) stated with a decision not pre- 
Adously justified. In 1903, Howarth inscribed upon a large scale map 
of the Cleveland area symbols to indicate the distribution of the 
principal types of erratics according to their respective sources. 
Accompanying this we had six pages of " Notes " by Howarth — 
actually a very clear and valuable summary of the knowledge of boulder 
distribution throughout Yorkshire. 
Adopting as a youth the profession of banking, John Henry 
Howarth started as a junior clerk with the Yorkshire Banking Company, 
and was in the service of the bank for thirty years. In 1899 he was 
appointed as general manager of the Halifax Joint Stock Bank, after- 
wards the West Yorkshire Bank, in which institute he ultimately 
became Chairman and Director, as well as general manager, and 
