£

8. d.

VALUATION OF THE SOCIETY'S PROPERTY; 31st December, 1880.

PROPERTY.

DEBTS.

£

s. d.

Due from Longman & Co., on account of Journal, vol. xxxvi. &c.

Balance in favour of the Society.

8452 0 0

61 3 1

12 Feb. 1881.

AWARD OF THE WOLLASTON MEDAL.

The Reports of the Council and of the Committees having been read, the President, ROBERT ETHERIDGE, Esq., F.R.S., presented the Wollaston Gold Medal to Prof. P. MARTIN DUNCAN, M.B. Lond., F.R.S., F.G.S., and addressed him as follows::

Professor DUNCAN,

It is with no ordinary pleasure that the Council have awarded to you the Wollaston Medal, the highest honour that it is in their power to bestow, in recognition of the valuable services which you have rendered during so many years to the advancement of Geology, and especially of Palæontology; and I may add that it is equally productive of gratification to me that this honour is to be formally conferred upon you by my hands. Since the year 1863 palæontologists have been indebted to you for no fewer than twenty-six memoirs relating to the history, structure, and distribution of the fossil Actinozoa, a group which you have made peculiarly your own by long-continued and most careful researches. Further, you have enriched the publications of the Palæontographical Society with several most important treatises on the British Fossil Corals, supplementary or, rather, perhaps, complementary to the classical Monograph of MM. Milne-Edwards and Haime.

These labours alone, and the value of their results, might have justified the Council in awarding you the Wollaston Medal; but besides your researches upon the Actinozoa, we have to point to several important papers upon the fossil Echinodermata, to others relating to subjects of Physical Geology (also freely touched upon in your more special memoirs), and particularly to your exceedingly important work in connexion with the Geological Survey of India, in describing the fossil corals of that Peninsula, and discussing the questions of both zoological and geological interest which naturally arise out of the study of those organisms. Few, indeed, of our Fellows are in a better position to appreciate your valuable labours than myself; scarcely a day passes that I have not occasion to consult one or more of your contributions; and the more I consult them the more I am convinced of their value. Patiently and unobtrusively, for nearly twenty years, you have followed out the line of research necessary for the fulfilment of your self-imposed task; you have sacrificed the advantages of professional life to devote your energies to the advancement of science; for seven years (from 1864 to 1870) you gave the Society the benefit of your services as one of its Honorary Secretaries, and for two years (1876, 1877) you worthily occupied the Presidential Chair. Such considerations as these would not alone, perhaps, have warranted the award of the Council; but the recollection of such services rendered to the Society is hardly out of place, as supplementing those more generally appreciable merits upon which the award was

really founded.

On all accounts it is with much pleasure that I

hand to you the Wollaston Medal.

Professor DUNCAN, in reply, said,—

Mr. PRESIDENT,—

The gift which you have presented to me, in the name of the Geological Society, I receive with feelings of great respect and thankfulness. This Medal comes to me bringing a twofold pleasure; for it is a distinction which has been hallowed and ennobled from its reception by a long succession of illustrious men, amongst whom were the founders of our science, our teachers, and many of our best friends; and because, in presenting it to me, you have spoken so sympathetically in appreciation of my scientific work-work which I have been enabled to bring before the world in consequence of the advantages which this Society has placed within my reach. Cheered by this expression of your approbation, I shall labour on in this our common and much-loved science, endeavouring always to merit the esteem of the Fellows of this Society.

AWARD OF THE MURCHISON MEDAL.

The PRESIDENT then presented the Murchison Medal to Prof. ARCHIBALD GEIKIE, F.R.S., F.G.S., and addressed him as follows:

Prof. GEIKIE,

If any one Fellow of our Society more than another could be selected to receive the Murchison Medal for his valuable contributions to Geology, it would be yourself; since no man living has contributed more to the advancement of that science which it is the special object of our Society to cultivate and diffuse. Your labours in the field connected with your duties as Director of the Geolological Survey of Scotland, your learned and valuable contributions to the Journal of our Society, the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Glasgow Geological Society, and other publications too numerous to mention, eminently qualify you to be the recipient of the Medal founded by your late chief and friend Sir Roderick Murchison. To enumerate your contributions to the literature of the geology of Scotland, or your many important writings connected with our science, would lead me too far -some thirty papers, besides educational works, have resulted from your industry and knowledge. Your able paper on the "Old Red Sandstone of Scotland," published in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, would of itself entitle you to the highest consideration of the Society. Able, indeed, are other contributions, especially those "On the Chronology of the Trap Rocks of Scot

VOL. XXXVII.

d

land," "On the Date of the last Elevation of Central Scotland" (in vol. xviii. of our Journal), "On the Phenomena of Succession amongst the Silurian Rocks of Scotland" (Trans. Glasgow Geol. Soc. vol. iii.), and "On Earth Sculpture." The Council believed, too, that it would be gratifying to you to receive as a mark of their esteem and sense of your untiring labours, the Medal founded by one with whom in earlier life you were closely associated, and whose endowed Chair of Geology in the University of Edinburgh you have been the first to fill.

Prof. GEIKIE, in reply, said,

Mr. PRESIDENT,—

If any thing could add to the gratification with which I receive this honour from the Geological Society, it would be the very kind and flattering terms in which you, Sir, have made the award, and the Fellows have been pleased to receive the announcement. The Geological Society of London has always seemed to me to be truly the Geological Society of the British Empire, electing its Fellows and bestowing its rewards, not in a local, but in a truly catholic and generous spirit. This conviction was renewed and strengthened in my mind on receipt of the unexpected intimation of the bestowal of one of the Society's Medals upon myself, as my contributions to science have but rarely appeared in the Society's publications, and I am so seldom able to be present within the Society's walls. I receive the Medal with peculiar pleasure; first, as a valuable mark of the Society's recognition, and next, as another link of association with the memory of Murchison, which is one of the most precious possessions of my life.

AWARD OF THE LYELL MEDAL.

The PRESIDENT next handed the Lyell Medal to Mr. WARINGTON W. SMYTH, F.R.S., F.G.S., for transmission to Dr. J. W. DAWSON, F.R.S., F.G.S., of Montreal, and addressed him as follows:

MR. WARINGTON SMYTH,

Sir Charles Lyell, in founding the Medal that bears his name, intended that it should serve as a mark of honorary distinction, and as an expression on the part of the governing body of the Society of their opinion that the Medallist has deserved well of science. I need hardly say that the Council, in awarding the Lyell Medal to Principal Dawson, have done so with a sincere appreciation of the high value of his truly great labours in the cause of Paleontology and Geology. When I refer to his published papers, I find that they number nearly 120, and that they give the results of most extensive and valuable researches in various departments of geology, but more especially upon the paleontology of the Devonian

and Carboniferous formations of Northern America. No fewer than 30 of these papers have appeared in the pages of our own Quarterly Journal. Considering the nature of these numerous contributions, the Council would have been fully justified in awarding to Dr. Dawson one of its Medals, upon the sole ground of the value of their contents; but these are far from representing the whole of the results of his incessant activity in the pursuit of science. His Acadian Geology,' Post-pliocene Geology of Canada,' and 'Fossil Plants of the Devonian and Upper Silurian of Canada' are most valuable contributions to our knowledge of North American Geology; whilst in his Archaia,' 'The Dawn of Life,' and other more or less popular writings, he has appealed, and worthily, to a wider public. We are indebted to his researches for nearly all our knowledge of the fossil flora of the Devonian and other Precarboniferous rocks of America, and of the structure and flora of the Nova-Scotian coal-field; and, finally, I must refer especially to his original investigation of the history, nature, and affinities of Eozoon. These researches are so well known that they have gained for Dr. Dawson a world-wide reputation; and it is as a slight mark of their esteem, and their high appreciation of his labours, that the Council have awarded to him this Medal, which I will request you to forward to him, with some verbal expression of the feeling with which it is offered.

Mr. WARINGTON W. SMYTH, in reply said—

That it gave him much pleasure to receive this Medal for Dr. Dawson, who much regretted that he was unable personally to be present, but had addressed a letter to the President expressing his sense of the honour conferred upon him, in the following terms:—

"I regret that distance and the claims of other duties prevent me from appearing in person to express to the Geological Society my sense of the honour conferred upon me by the award of the Lyell Medal.

"This expression of approval on the part of those whose good opinion I value so highly is doubly grateful to one who is so deeply sensible of the imperfection of scientific work done in circumstances of isolation from the greater centres of scientific life, and under the pressure of the severe demands made in a new and growing country on those engaged in educational pursuits.

"It is further especially gratifying to me that this token of your kindly recognition is connected with the illustrious and honoured name of Sir Charles Lyell. Forty years ago the foundation of my geological education was laid by the late Prof. Jameson and other able educators in natural science, his contemporaries, in Edinburgh; but in so far as I have been able to build any thing worthily on this substructure, the credit is due to the study of the Principles of Geology,' and to the personal friendship and generous kindness of Sir Charles Lyell more than to any other cause."