Thomas George Bonney was born July 27th, 1833, at Rugeley, Staffordshire. His family is of Huguenot origin, and thus affords yet another instance of the remarkable intellectual enrichment of our country which resulted from the religious persecutions in France. His father, the Rev. Thomas Bonney, son of the Rev. George Bonney, vicar of Sandon, and sometime Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, was a man of wide and varied interests, and a hard worker, in spite of feeble health; he was master of the Grammar School, Rugeley, and for many years ‘perpetual curate’ of Pipe Ridware, a very small parish about five miles from Rugeley. The church was rebuilt through his efforts, and he took great interest in primary education, acting for some time informally as Inspector of Schools in the Diocese. He married a daughter of Edward Smith, a Staffordshire man of independent means, and died in 1853, leaving a widow and ten children, of whom Professor Bonney, then just entering upon his second year at Cambridge, was the eldest. The family inherited some property, but the income it afforded was small for the education of so many.

During a recent visit to Egypt, through the kindness of Captain H. G. Lyons, Director-General of the Egyptian Survey, I have on several occasions had opportunities of accompanying members of the Staff of the Geological Survey on collecting expeditions into the Western Desert.

In one of his recent visits to the Natural History Museum, Major C. E. Beadnell kindly showed me a fine example of the well-known shell Pleurotoma prisca, which had been obtained some years ago by his son, Mr. Hugh J. L. Beadnell, F.G.S. (now of the Geological Survey of Egypt), when collecting specimens from the Barton Clay (Middle Eocene) in the historical cliffs at Barton, Hampshire, whence, prior to 1766, Gustavus Brander, F.R.S., made his famous collection, some of the specimens of which are still preserved in the British Museum (Natural History).

So much confusion has existed on the subject of limburgite, that, although it has now been partly dissipated, a record of my own investigations may be of use, at any rate to English petrologists. The rock has been classed by some with the peridotites. From these it is separated by Rosenbusch, who in his latest work places it in a subgroup with the augitites in proximity to the basalts. Zirkel uses limburgite as a synonym for magma-basalt. F. Graeff implies relationship with the nepheline-basalts. Harker's remarks suggest similar conclusions, as do those of Cole, though his opening words are perhaps slightly misleading. All, however, lay so much stress upon the absence of felspar, by giving such definitions as “Limburgite und Augitite sind die felspathfreien Entglieder der Gesteinreihe Trachydolerit, Tephrit,” etc., or “Frei von Feldspar und Felspathoiden ist der Limburgit,” and in some cases by reference to the peridotites, that students may readily overlook the fact that this rock is only free from felspar in the same sense as tachylite or many pitchstones and obsidians.

In 1884 I described in the GeologicalMagazine a section of Keuper Marls exposed by the excavation of the Boulder-clay at Moorhey, Great Crosby. This was our first knowledge of their existence in the neighbourhood, the whole area being covered with a thick mantle of Boulder-clay excepting where the Lower Keuper Sandstone comes to the surface in the villages of Great and Little Crosby.