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GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



Feb. 1 , 1 840. Annual General Meeting. 



The President announced that the Wollaston Medal had been 

 awarded to Prof. Dumont, of Liege, for his Memoir, Map, and 

 Sections on the Geological Constitution of the Province of Li6ge, 

 published in 1832 ; and one year's interest of the Wollaston Fund 

 to Mr. James De Carle Sowerby, in order to facilitate the continua- 

 tion of his researches in Mineral Conchology ; Dr. Buckland, on 

 presenting the Medal to Dr. Fitton, who had been requested by M. 

 Dumont to receive it on his behalf, said : 



DR. FITTON, 



I am highly gratified that it has become my duty on the present 

 occasion, to commit to your care as the Representative of our common 

 friend, Professor Dumont, the Wollaston Gold Medal, which has 

 been awarded to him by the Council of this Society for his Me- 

 moir on the Geological Constitution of the province of Liege pub- 

 lished at Brussels in 1832. 



The grounds of our tardy recognition in 1840, of the merits 

 of a work published so long as eight years ago, are the same, that in 

 1830, prompted the Judges appointed by the Academy of Brussels, 

 to select this Memoir as most worthy of the Prize then proposed by 

 that Academy, for the best Geological description of the province 

 which has formed the subject of M. Dumont's successful labours. 



In the work thus doubly crowned, the Author has described the 

 mineralogical and zoological characters of the rocks which occupy 

 this district, and determined in minute detail, the relative places in 

 order of succession, and the superficial extent of each subordinate 

 division of the several formations. He has also illustrated the 

 same by an accurately coloured Geological Map, and by coloured 

 Sections, showing the general disposal of the strata in their original 

 order of deposition, and the extraordinary derangements and dis- 

 turbances that have subsequently thrown them into a state of almost 

 inextricable confusion. In the execution of this work, M. Dumont 

 has evidenced unusual powers of discriminating and accurate obser- 

 vation, combined with a high capacity of reducing the minutiae of 

 local details under the dominion of enlarged and masterly theo- 

 retical generalizations. Advancing at the early age of twenty one, 

 to a task of gigantic labour, in a region where the unexampled dis- 

 turbances, and almost incredible complexity of its component strata 

 had baffled the sagacity of the most experienced geologists, this 

 extraordinary youth at once withdraws the veil of confusion which 

 had hitherto disguised the stratigraphical arrangements of his native 

 province, and as it were, by an intuitive touch, reduces to order 

 the entangled and almost incredible phenomena of dislocation, con- 

 tortion, and inversion which had perplexed his predecessors in the 

 same field of observation. 



In addition to the scientific value of M. Dumont's exact and la- 

 borious researches, in illustrating a high and difficult problem in 

 positive geology, his work assumes a place of great statistical and 



