The book that the youthful Arkell received was first published in 1871, three years before Phillips’ death. It has been reprinted, and can be obtained for a modest sum from Forgotten Books. It is less delightful and perhaps less accessible to the general reader than Arkell’s masterpiece (The Geology of Oxford [Oxford, 1947). It does have its lyrical moments: there is an evocative passage on rivers (p. 34), and a splendid rhapsody on the anthropocene history of Wittenham hill (479); and knowledge of the Latin classics is not suppressed. But in general Phillips gives us a sober, even dry account of the geological fortunes, not just of Oxfordshire but of the whole basin of the Thames (stretched to include his beloved Malverns), arranged chronologically from the Cambrian to the present. ‘I know’, he comments, 'of no district of equal area which offers so great a variety of interesting facts to the geological observer, in a country as full of natural beauty and historical associations’ (p. 10). He is interested not just in rocks but in trees (a fascinating note on p. 52) and flowers (orchids listed on p. 53). The first chapter is a succinct sketch of the way in which the subject had developed, from the times of Tradescant and Ashmole to the present when the new railway cuttings had opened up much that had been inaccessible in the past (the unfortunate Strickland had been killed while geologising in a cutting on the Great Northern line). The bulk of the book is taken up by meticulous lists of fossils, beautifully illustrated by plates and woodcuts drawn by the author; but particular emphasis is naturally placed on the recently discovered Cetiosaurus, which Phillips, with the help of his assistant Caudell, had painstakingly reconstructed. Recording a deep borehole at Wytham (pp. 296-7), Phillips interestingly uses workmen’s terms as employed in the Staffordshire coalfields: 59 different layers, Clunch and Clunch bines, Dark ground and Mingled ground. He has seen shells ‘in one of the blocks at Stonehenge’ (p. 447), but will not tell us where to look for them. No less cautiously, he advises against making one’s own artesian well without expert help (p. 501). Nor does he forget the future. Ever interested in water, he ends (pp. 502-3) on a prophetic note: ‘Instead of depending on the Thames and its branches, “new rivers” may have to be brought from distant regions …; and, though not in our days, the slopes of Welsh mountains like Plynlimmon and the Berwyns may be formed into reservoirs, and the midland counties of England be traversed by aqueducts grander than any which span the plains of Provence or the Campagna of Rome.’

laid to rest in York

This well-liked and genial character was a facilitator, not a controversialist. He saw no conflict between religion and geology, and, though he recognised that the Earth must have existed for an enormously long time, he did not accept Darwin’s evolutionary theories. His geology is naturally outdated. But his legacy lives on, in the Oxford science school and in the University Museum. He died a very Oxford death. He had dined at All Souls in illustrious company, the Warden of the college, the professor of International Law, the Principal of Jesus. After dinner, he stumbled over a mat, and fell down fifteen stone steps. He had been born in Wiltshire, and had lived in Oxford for seventeen years. But his request was to be buried with his sister at York, and thither he was carried by train for an elaborate funeral. No one associated with Oxford geology can approach his distinction.