382 Presentation of the Wollastmi Medal for 1840. 



the end of his life, and has been since conducted by yourself, 

 and the association of his name with that of Dr Wollaston re- 

 calls to my mind, as it must to the minds of most of my hear- 

 ers, pleasing and grateful recollections of the benefits which, 

 during their lives, they both conferred on this Society, and 

 which their works will have extended to our contemporaries 

 and successoi's in this department of scientific inquiry. It was 

 your father's peculiar merit to be one of those accurate and 

 enthusiastic observers of nature who have, in modern times, 

 contributed so much to remove from science the rugged and 

 austere aspect under which it used to be presented ; and who," 

 by facilitating to every one the means of advancing pleasantly 

 in its pursuits, have, in an essential manner, promoted and 

 given popularity to the sciences of botany and conchology. It 

 is to mineral conchology, which he has so especially promoted, 

 that we, who are occupied with the investigation of the struc- 

 ture of the earth, have in modern times been mainly indebted 

 for evidences which have led to the establishment of many of 

 the most important stratigraphical distributions that have 

 arisen from discoveries as to the successive changes in ani- 

 mated nature, made known to us by the study of fossil shells. It 

 was on this foundation that Cuvier and Brongniart established 

 their important divisions of the marine and fresh- water strata 

 of the tertiary formations, still more minutely distributed by 

 Mr Lyell into the Eocene, and Pliocene, and Miocene series, 

 according to their relative numbers of extinct and recent spe- 

 cies of fossil shells. It was on a similar foundation that Smith 

 rested his identification of the secondary formations of Eng- 

 land by their fossil remains. It is on the same basis of 

 conchological evidence that Mr Murchison has founded his 

 fourfold subdivisions of the silurian portion ^of the transition- 

 rocks ; and it is chiefly to the illumination which this branch 

 of palaeontology has shed upon the changes that took place on 

 the surface of the earth, whilst its strata were in the process 

 of formation, that ^^e owe the rapid advance in geological 

 knowledge which has been made since the commencement of 

 the present century. To this rapid progress, arising from the 

 introduction of the evidences of mineral conchology, your 

 publications, and those of your family, have largely contributed. 



