3ff^ Fresetiiaf/oA-i/ l/ia-WoUagfo/t Medal for 1840.\ 



oflliis oar 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 de- v 

 scription 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 cha- • 

 racters of the rocks which occupy this district ; he has also ■ 

 determined, in minute detail, the relative place in the order 

 of succession, and the superficial extent of each subordinate 

 division of the several fonnations : and has illustrated the same 

 by an accurately coloured geological map, and by coloured 

 sections, shewing the general disposal of the strata in their 

 original order of superposition, and the extraordinary derange- 

 ments and disturbances that have subsequently tlu'own them 

 into a state of almost inextricable confusion. In the execu- 

 tion of this work, M. Dumont has evinced unusual powers of 

 discriminating and accurate observation, combined with a high 

 capacity of reducing the minutiae of local details under the 

 dominion of enlarged and masterly theoretical generalizations. 

 Advancing, at the early age of twenty-one, to a task of gigan- 

 tic labour, in a region where the unheard of disturbances, 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 arrangement 

 of his native province ; and, as it were, by an intuitive touch, 

 reduced to order the entangled and almost incredible phe- 

 nomena of dislocation, contortion, and inversion, which had 

 perplexed his predecessors in the same field of obsei'vation. 

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

 laljoridus researches, in illustrating a high and difficult pro- • 

 blem in positive geology, his Avork assumes a place of great 

 statistical and commercial importance, as describing the struc- 

 ture and contents of a rich and productive carboniferous dis- 

 trict, containing eighty-tliree beds of valuable coal ; and its 

 practical utility has .been fully shewn, by the fact of a se- 

 cond edition having been required to supply the demands of 



