The founder member of Southampton Mineral & Fossil Society, John W. Thomas has been granted the status of Honorary President of the Society in recognition of his unstinting dedication to the Society's interests over the past five decades.

The award was made to John by members of the SMFS Committee at his home in August 2022. The photograph left shows a very happy John with his award certificate after the presentation recognising his monumental acheivement of serving the Society for over 50 years. Many congratulations to John.

This book is intended to be the most complete and up-to-date guide to the geology and fossils of the New Forest, providing a wealth of information of interest to both the amateur fossil collector and the professional geologist. With some 200 field photographs, palaeogeographic maps, digitised borehole/outcrop logs, and geological cross sections this book includes:

1. A tour of the regional geological evolution of southern England since the Permian Period (-280 million years ago), based on deep boreholes and coastal exposures, including the world-famous Jurassic coast of Dorset and east Devon.
2. A discussion of the petroleum geology of southern England and the New Forest.
3. A detailed overview of the stratigraphy of the Hampshire Basin, followed by related aspects of economic geology within this area, including ironstones, freshwater aquifers, geothermal energy, sand, clay and peat resources
4. An up-to-date and complete account of the principal fossil localities, together with a comprehensive gallery of photographs with accompanying descriptions of the most abundant fossils within the New Forest National Park

Dr James Barnet grew up in the New Forest and became interested in its geology at an early age. He has been a member of SMFS for many years. With a first class master's degree and a PhD in Geology, James has worked in the petroleum industry and is now a post-doctoral researcher at the University of St Andrews. This book represents the culmination of almost thirty years' experience of fossil hunting and geological study in and around the New Forest, as well as along the Jurassic coast.

For further details about the book, or to order a copy, go to the publishers web site at: The Crowood Press.

The 2022 Southampton Mineral & Fossil Society Evening Meeting Programme will resume in March 2022 on the third Tuesday of each month. We shall continue online meetings in the Autumn and Winter months. We also have a number of field trips planned. A provisional programme with dates has been published on our Programme Page you can see the programme for each month, download the programme dates as a PDF document or download a calendar file to add to your electronic calendar. In September we shall be holding our annual Hampshire Mineral & Fossil Show. Take a look at the SMFS Programme Page for more information and links.

Southampton Mineral & Fossil Society was formed in 1971 and in 2021 we celebrated our 50th anniversary. The Society started out as Southampton Lapidary Society with the first meeting in April 1971 attended by sixteen people. The first public evening meeting was held in Southampton on 2nd June with thirty-two people attending. Since then the Society has continued to grow, and has undergone a couple of name changes to what we are today. The Society continues to flourish and has a strong, active membership. To celebrate our 40th anniversary we compiled an 158 page illustrated A4 book about the Society and it's achievements over the four decades. The printed book was made available to members and the book is now available as an electronic document if you are interested in finding out more about our history. The book is in PDF format and the file size is nearly 10 MB so it will take a little time to download: Four Decades of SMFS. For 2021 we published an update recording the the 5th decade of Southampton Mineral & Fossil Society to commemorate our 50 years of rocking in the City.