^0 Hermann v. Meyer's Palwontological Notes. 



our theorists imagine. When it is considered, for example, 

 that the immense profusion of fish on the shores of the 

 Netlierlands, in summer declines to absolute poverty, many 

 of the fish then seeking other littoral regions, we may con- 

 ceive that the variation in the numbers of petrifactions which 

 the strata of one and the same formation present, the alter- 

 nation of highly fossiliferous beds with others in which fossils 

 are rare, or entirely wanting, that the interruptions in the 

 occurrence of species by beds in which they do not appear, 

 as well as the diversity in fossils which is observed when, in 

 wide-spread formations, the same stratum is followed to dis- 

 tant points, may in part be explained by the alternation of 

 seasons. On the strand, newly exposed by the retiring sea, 

 at the season of my visiting it, I rarely found a fish ; it was 

 chiefly molluscs, sea-stars, among them often those with four 

 rays, prawns, and among plants fucoids, that were left be- 

 hind. In a sand-hill I found the shell of a crab full of the 

 fine sand, and in the best way to become a petrifaction. Even 

 the more frequent occurrence of cetacea in certain parts of 

 the molasse formation is explained by the fact that at present 

 there are particular parts of the sea-shore where cetacea are 

 very frequently stranded ; Ostend is such a locality. These 

 whale-like animals are often thrown on shore ; among others, 

 the monster which, after going the tour of Europe as a cu- 

 riosity, is now found at St Petersburg. 



Address Delivered by the President (Sir J. F. W. Herschel, 

 Bart.) on presenting the. Honorary Medal of the Astronomi- 

 cal Society to William Lassell, Esq., of Liverpool. 



Gentlemen, — The Report of the Council having been 

 read, in which the astronomical discoveries of the year, and 

 especially that of the planet Metis, have been clearly and 

 eloquently commemorated, it is now my pleasing duty to 

 state to you the grounds on which it has been agreed by us 

 to award the gold medal of the Society for this year to Mr 

 Lassell. And this duty, pleasing in itself, I execute with 

 the greater satisfaction, because I have a sort of hereditary 

 fellow-feeling with Mr Lassell, seeing that he belongs to that 



