PHILLIPS, William, an industrious mineralogist and geologist, was born in London on the 10th of May 1773. In conjunction with his brother Richard Phillips, already noticed, and eight other young men, chiefly of the Society of Friends, he founded the Askeian Society, to which he contributed his first paper in 1801, "On the Virgula Divinatoria, or Divining-Rod," afterwards published in the Philosophical Magazine. The principal objects of Phillips' early studies were mineralogy and geology; and few men of his time contributed more to the diffusion of general information on these sciences. He was among the very first to turn to good account the reflective goniometer of Wollaston in the measurement of crystals; and in the use of that instrument, says Dr Whewell (Hist. of Ind. Sciences), "No one was more laborious and successful than William Phillips, whose power of apprehending the most complex forms with steadiness and clearness led Wollaston to say that he had a 'geometrical sense.'" His Elementary Introduction to the Knowledge of Mineralogy, first published in 1816, and made the basis in 1852 of Brooke and Miller's Introduction to Mineralogy, is pronounced by the same writer to be "an extraordinary treasure of crystallographic facts." This work had been an expansion of his Outlines of Mineralogy and Geology, published some years previously for the use of the young. In 1818 he published An Outline of the Geology of England and Wales, which he afterwards expanded into his more famous Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales. William Phillips likewise contributed elaborate communications on subjects connected with his favourite sciences of mineralogy and geology to the first series of Transactions of the Geological Society. He also wrote some minor papers for the Annals of Philosophy and the Philosophical Magazine. He was chosen a fellow of the Royal Society a year before his death, which took place in the spring of 1828.