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three successive Divisional Road Engineers until his retirement in June1969.

He was responsible at various times for engineering approval for theMinistry of road improvements and other highway matters in theBirmingham conurbation, in Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Shropshire.He will be sadly missed by all County Surveyors and Engineers to LocalAuthority Engineers in those areas where his wise counsels and energeticeffort brought a number of important road schemes, large and small, tofull fruition . Considerable credit goes to him for his efforts which enableda start to be made with such projects as the Birmingham Inner Ring Road,Hockley Flyover, M5 and M50 motorways, Ross by-pass, A40 widening,Hereford Town Bridge and many others.

Among his many interests were a great love of music and the theatre.He was a devoted member of his church where he was a sidesman andmember of the choir.

He leaves a widow and one married daughter.D. R.

HERBERT HAROLD READ, F.R.S., Emeritus Professor in the University ofLondon, who died on 29 March 1970, was a past President and anHonorary Member of the Association. He had played an active part in itsaffairs, directing Field Meetings, serving on committees and publishingregularly in the PROCEEDINGS. His wartime Presidential Addresses,'Meditations on Granite' (1943 and 1944), must rank among the mostinfluential works ever to appear in the PROCEEDINGS, for they played a largepart in clearing the ground for the growth of modern ideas on the origin ofgranite.

Read was a farmer's son and retained throughout his life many attributesof the countryman. Born in Kent in 1889, he obtained scholarships andexhibitions to the Simon Langton School in Canterbury and later toImperial College, London, where he intended to study physics. Thelectures of W. W. Watts which introduced him to geology caused him tochange his mind and launched him into what must surely have been a morecongenial profession. He joined the Geological Survey of Great Britain in1914 but volunteered almost at once for active war service (he enlisted in1914 as a private in the Royal Fusiliers and was invalided out with therank of corporal in 1917). He then spent some fourteen years based on theScottish Office in Edinburgh and working mainly in the metamorphicterrains of the Highlands and Islands. The foundations of his vast fieldexperience were laid at this time, for he was called on to undertake therevision and co-ordination of work begun many years earlier as well as toembark on the mapping of new areas.. Most of his official work wasconnected with three regions which he grew to love-the district of Buchan

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in north-east Scotland, the county of Sutherland and the island of Unst inthe Shetlands. He instinctively felt at home in the farming and croftingcommunities of these regions which figured largely in his later remini­scences.

Read's geological interests during his years with the surveycentred aboutthree themes which he continued to explore to the end of his life. Thefirst was the problem of the variations connected with differentiation andcontamination in basic magma. He was still thinking and writing about thisproblem nearly fifty years after his first encounter with the gabbros ofnorth-east Scotland.

His second preoccupation was with the relationships between theprocesses of regional metamorphism and the other deep-seated geologicalprocesses operating in orogenic belts. In Buchan, he saw that the meta­morphic complexes characterised by andalusite differed from thosedeveloped elsewhere in the Highlands; and in Unst he found that theenvironments of metamorphism had varied both in space and in time. Hebecame increasingly interested in the possibilities of understanding thehistory of metamorphic rocks in terms of the evolution of an entire crustalbelt, and many of his students werelater encouraged to take up work alongthese lines.

The third geological theme which engaged Read's interest concerned theorigin and significance of granite. He realised that the great migmatite­complexes of Deeside and Sutherland must have developed more or lessin situ and began to consider the connections between migmatites such asthese and the more homogeneous granites which were commonly regardedas magmatic intrusions. He developed his views in the 'Meditations onGranite' delivered to the Association and in several other addresses whichhe subsequently reprinted in book form as The Granite Controversy (1957).These works were quoted, jokes and all, by geologists in every country andestablished his international reputation.

In 1931, Read left the Survey and returned to academic life, firstly asProfessor of Geology at the University of Liverpool and later (1938) ashead of his old department in Imperial College, London. Though he camelate to teaching, his obvious enjoyment of his subject and his undogmaticapproach made a considerable appeal to his students. His flair for sortingout the inessentials and exposing the core of a problem made him not onlya superb lecturer but also an ideal person to advise research students.Many former students probably still discuss a research topic or draft apaper with his jokes and aphorisms at the back of their minds. His com­plete lack of pretension and his characteristic blend of humour and com­mon sense, with his deep religious faith, all contributed to one's instinctivesense that one had been in contact with a wise and great man. It is ameasure of the affection he aroused that sixteen authors contributed to the

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volume prepared by the Association in honour of his eightieth birthday.!After Read's retirement (1955) he carried on with active research-he

had launched a big mapping project concerned with the granites ofDonegala few years earlier-and with the preparation of a series of text-books incollaboration with the present writer. His last few years, after a severeillness in 1963, were spent at home with his wife in Whitstable, with hisdaughter and grandchildren close at hand, working on these books withundiminished interest; the final volume was far advanced when he died andwill be published in due course.

s.w.

1 PROCEEDINGS, Vol. 81, Part 3 (1970): this volume contains an Appreciation by ProfessorD. William. and a full bibliography.