Clement Reid, F.R.S.

Abstract

THE death of Mr. Clement Reid on December 10 is a severe loss alike to geological and to botanical science. Born on January 6, 1853, Reid joined the Geological Survey in 1874, and began field-work in the south-west of England, but was soon transferred to the eastern counties. Here, in mapping the Cromer Forest Bed and other plant-bearing formations exposed on the coast, he entered upon the investigation of our Pliocene and Pleistocene flora, which thereafter he pursued with characteristic enthusiasm and ability throughout his life. Devising ingenious methods for separating out the seeds of plants from any material in which they lay hidden, he showed the significance of these inconspicuous fossils as indicators of past climate; and he soon became recognised as our leading authority on this subject. In the “Cromer” memoir of the Geological Survey (1882) he firmly established his capability both as an investigator and as an expositor. His next field-work was in Yorkshire, first on the north-eastern moorlands and then in the Holder-ness country, after which it was carried southward into Lincolnshire, the results being published in the “Holderness” memoir (1885). This done, he was sent to map the South Downs and the coastal tract of Sussex; and he worked westward thence through Hampshire and part of the Isle of Wight into Dorset and Wiltshire, describing this country in several more memoirs, published between 1898 and 1903. Meanwhile, he had also produced a collective “General” memoir on the Pliocene deposits of Britain (1890), during the preparation of which he visited Belgium and North Italy for the study of the equivalent deposits there.