Nature, reviewing Professor Prestwich's book on geology in 1886, characterized him as the acknowledged master of British geology, of whom it might be safely affirmed that no living geologist had contributed in a greater degree to the advance of science by his important original researches.
Sir Joseph Lister, speaking in the Royal Society of his death, said that in him "we have lost about the last link that remained which connected geologists of the present day with the founders of the science in the first half of the century. To him we are indebted not only for the first comprehensive classification of the Tertiary beds of this country, to which he assigned the names by which they will henceforth be universally known, but also for their connection with the strata of the Paris basin. To him also is due the credit of having been the first to establish the authenticity of the remains of human workmanship found in the drift deposits of the valley of the Somme, and of thus having laid secure foundations on which arguments as to the extreme antiquity of man upon the earth may be based. In France his name is known and respected as much as in England, and it would be hard to say how much of the advance in geological knowledge during the last sixty years was not due to his unremitted labors, which extended over the whole of that period."
Professor Prestwich retired from the professorship at Oxford in 1888, and spent the rest of his life at his country home in Shoreham, working till almost his last day with undiminished activity. The list of his papers in the catalogue of the Royal Society includes seventy-seven titles, to say nothing of his contributions to other societies and journals. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1853; was appointed its vice-president in 1870; was president of the Geological Society in 1870; obtained the Wollaston medal of the Geological Society in 1849, and the Royal medal of the Royal Society in 1865; was president of the International Geological Congress in 1888; and was correspondent of the Institute of France, and foreign member of the Accademia dei Lyncei, Rome, the Imperial Geological Institute of Vienna, the Royal Academy of Brussels, the American Philosophical Society, and other learned bodies.
