member of Christ Church soon after entering upon his duties. In 1879 he refused the presidency of the British Association, fearing the strain of additional work, and in February 1885 was elected a corresponding member of the French Academy of Sciences. Early in 1888 he vacated the professorship, being succeeded by Alexander Henry Green [q. v. Suppl.], and published the second volume of his 'Geology, Chemical, Physical, and Stratigraphical' (the first having appeared in 1880), receiving later in the year the degree of D.C.L. from the university. He was president of the International Geological Congress which that year met in London, but Darent Hulme was henceforth his
only residence.
His later work dealt more especially with quaternary deposits, such as the so-called Westleton shingle, a gravel of which he believed the equivalents could be found over a large part of England. An important paper on this subject was published in 1889 with another on the flint implements found by Mr. B. Harrison, as already mentioned. 1895 saw the publication of a volume entitled 'The Tradition of the Flood,' of another entitled 'Collected Papers on some Controverted Questions of Geology,' of a reissue, with additions, of the 'Water-bearing Strata of the Country around London,' and of an article in the 'Nineteenth Century' on the 'Greater Antiquity of Man.' Health, however, was now gradually failing; continuous exertion, whether physical or mental, became more difficult, though his interest in geology and in his garden never flagged ; but a sudden failure of strength occurred on 1 Nov. 1895, which was the beginning of the end. He lived to receive one more recognition of his services, for on New Year's day 1896 he was gazetted a knight. He died on 23 June 1896 and was buried in Shoreham churchyard. Lady Prestwich, herself well versed in geology and his constant helpmate, survived to write a memoir of her husband, which appeared in June 1899, but in September she also, after long ill-health, passed away at Darent Hulme.
As a geologist Prestwich's strength lay in stratigraphy. There his work is masterly. In physical questions also he took great interest, but it may be doubted whether he was so uniformly successful in dealing with them, while to petrological, like most geologists of his generation, he gave little attention. As an observer he was remarkable for accuracy, patience, and industry ; no pains were spared in collecting materials, and his work on the tertiary and quaternary deposits will on this ground have a permanent value, even though some of his conclusions may fail to command general acceptance. These, however, will not be numerous. His position in regard to geology was a somewhat exceptional one ; for, while accepting on the whole the uniformitarian views maintained by Charles Lyell [q. v.], he did not entirely abandon some tenets of the older school, such as the occasional intensification of natural forces on a rather large scale. For instance, he held that a flood had spread over England, and much, if not all, of Europe, in quaternary times, which partly destroyed palaeolithic man. While assigning to the latter an earlier appearance than would be conceded by some geologists, he placed the glacial age within twenty or twenty-five thousand years of the present date.
His writings, according to the list printed in the 'Memoir,' are 140 in number, including two papers posthumously published. Of these, six were books ; one, however, consisting only of republished papers ; several of the remainder were pamphlets, reports, or reviews, the rest contributions to scientific periodicals, especially of the Geological and Royal Societies. Some of the more important have been mentioned above, but those on the agency of water in volcanic eruptions, the thickness and mobility of the earth's crust, and underground temperatures, published in the 'Proceedings of the Royal Society,' and that on the ' Parallel Roads of Lochaber,' published in the ' Philosophical Transactions' (vol. xvii.), must not be forgotten. In the last-named he supposes the terraces to have had their origin on the shores of a freshwater lake formed upon a glacier, the lower portion of it being raised to a higher level by a jamming of the ice. The idea is ingenious, and avoids some difficulties in the two rival theories, usually in favour, viz., seaside terraces produced during a submergence, and terraces on the side of an ordinary lake, the mouth of which is dammed by ice, but is not without grave difficulties of its own.
In personal appearance Prestwich was well above middle height, thin, and rather fragile in aspect, with delicate features, a remarkably fine forehead, and attractive expression, corresponding with that singular kindness of manner and courtesy, even to opponents, which, with his inflexible integrity, made him no less beloved than respected. He was the last representative of that generation of great geologists who were born within a few years of the beginning of the present century, though with them he was always 'Young Prestwich,'
