444 fyeologicfll Society. 



ledge, by devoting their hours of leisure to the pursuit of Natural 

 Science. 



Mr. Pliillips was the author of several papers in our Transactions, 

 all of them containing proofs of the zeal and effect with which he 

 pursued his inquiries. It was after the invention of Dr. Wollaston's 

 reflective Goniometer, that his assiduity and success in the use of 

 that beautiful instrument enabled him to produce his most valuable 

 Crystallographic Memoirs ; and the third edition of his elaborate 

 work on Mineralogy* contains perhaps the most remarkable re- 

 sults ever yet produced in Crystallography, from the application of 

 goniometric measurement, without the aid of mathematics. In our 

 fifth volume Mr. Phillips has compared some of the strata near 

 Dover with those of the opposite coast of France ; and has proved, 

 that the cliffs on the two sides of the English Channel, though evi- 

 dently portions of strata once continuous, must always have been 

 separated by a considerable space. He was the author likewise of 

 several detached works, which have materially promoted the study 

 of Mineralogy and Geology. But the service for which he principally 

 claims the gratitude of English Geologists, is his having been the 

 proposer of the Geological "Outlines of England and Wales;" in 

 which his name is joined with that of the Rev. William D. Cony- 

 beare; — a book too well known to require any new commendation, 

 and to the completion of which we all look forward with increasing 

 interest and expectation. 



You have heard, in the Annual Report, the document by which 

 Dr. Wollaston acquainted the Society with a donation intended 

 for the advancement of Geological research. This paper was 

 dated on the 8th of December last : the tremulous and uncertain 

 character of the signature too evidently testified the declining state 

 of the writer; and in a i'ew days afterwards f, not our Society, nor 

 England only, but the whole scientific world had to lament his 

 death. 



In this place, and in the presence of so many to whom he was 

 personally known, I could not trust myself to speak of Dr. Wollas- 

 ton, so soon after the melancholy event which has deprived us of 

 him, in the tone that might be suitable to a public meeting. And yet, 

 if there ever was a man, in the estimate of whose character the 

 feelings of private attachment might be allowed to mix themselves 

 with scientific approbation, it was he: his personal and his intel- 

 lectual qualities were so consistent ; both flowing obviously from the 

 same independence of spirit and strict love of truth; and both 

 exhibiting such admirable simplicity and good taste. 



The greater number of Dr. Wollaston's productions belong to 

 departments of incjuiry which do not come within the object of 

 our present consideration, and are recorded in the Transac- 

 tions of that distinguished body, of which for many years he was 



* " An Elementary Introduction to Mineralogy, &c. 3rd edition, enlarged, 

 with numerous Wood-cuts of Crystals." — London, 1823. 



+ Dr. Wollaston died on the l,'2nd of December 182S. He was born on 

 the 6th of August 1 IQ^y. 



one 



