156 Geological Society. 
as detailed in this paper, consists in the process of examination 
employed to correct the imperfections in laying down the divisions 
by methods which give only approximate degrees of accuracy. 
The Copley Medal, and the two Royal Medals for the present year 
were delivered, pursuant to the awards made by the Council. 
The ballot for the election of Council and Officers being taken, 
the Scrutators reported the following as the result. 
President: His Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex, K.G.— 
Treasurer: Francis Baily, Esq.—Secretaries: Peter Mark Roget, 
M.D.; John George Children, Esq.—Foreign Secretary : Charles 
Konig, Esq. 
Other Members of the Council: William Allen, Esq.; Rey. William 
Buckland, D.D.; Samuel Hunter Christie, Esq.; Rev. James Cum- 
ming; Davies Gilbert, Esq.; Joseph Henry Green, Esq.; Henry 
Holland, M.D.; William Lawrence, Esq. ; John William Lubbock, 
Esq. ; Herbert Mayo, Esq. ; Roderick Impey Murchison, Esq. ; Rev. 
Robert Murphy, M.A.; Sir John Rennie; William Henry Smyth, 
Capt. R.N.; Edward Turner, M.D.;. Rev. William Whewell. 
GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
(Nov. 18, 1835, continued.) —< Geological notes made during a 
survey of the East and West Coasts of South America, in the years 
1832, 1833, 1834, and 1835, with an account of a transverse section 
of the Cordilleras of the Andes between Valparaiso and Mendoza ;"’ 
by F. Darwin, Esq., of St. John’s College, Cambridge ; communicated 
by Prof. Sedgwick, were afterwards read. 
Prof. Sedgwick began by observing that the notes were extracted 
from a series of letters (addresssd to Professor Henslow), containing 
a very great mass of information connected with almost every branch 
of natural history ; and that he had selected for the occasion those re- 
marks only which he thought more especially interesting to the Geo- 
logical Society. 
Mr. Darwin’s first letter contained some account of St. Jago (one 
of the Cape Verde Islands), which he visited early in 1832; and he 
considered that he had good evidence of its recent elevation, as he 
found on its surface beds of recent shells and corals considerably above 
the actual level of the sea. 
In various portions of the notes he shortly described the vast extent 
of primary rocks along the shores of Patagonia, the existence of highly 
crystalline schists in the Falkland Islands, alternating with micaceous 
slaty sandstone, exhibiting the casts of bivalves (Terebratulz), and 
encrinital stems, and a rock near Cape Famine containing “some sort of 
Ammonites.’’ On the line of the western coast of South America, from 
Chiloe to Tres Montes, he found a widely extended formation of mica- 
slate, traversed and burst through by a grand transverse chain of gra- 
nite, and penetrated by innumerable dykes of great complexity of 
mineral structure. 
From the position of the tertiary deposits, which exist on both sides 
of the Southern Andes, he concludes that the primary chain must have 
