1H77. In 1881 he was awarded the Wollaston Medal, the hio-htsfc 

 honour which the Geological Society can bestow. Though he was 

 most closely connected with the Geological Society, he was au 

 influential member of other scientific bodies; he served on the 

 Council of the Royal Society from 1876 to 1878, was President of the 

 Geological Section of the British Association in 1879, and of the 

 Microscopical Society from 1881 to 1883. 



On turning to Professor Duncan's scientific wt>rk, one is impressed 

 by the enormous amount he accomplished, and the wide range of his 

 interests and influence. His first paper (1856) was botanical, and he 

 long retained his attachment to this subject, his last paper on veget- 

 able physiology being published in 1874; while, still later on, he 

 worked out the parasitic Alg88 which he discovered in some Silurian 

 Corals. His first important work was the series of five memoirs on 

 the Fossil Corals of the West Indies. The subject was full of 

 difficulties ; the living Corals of the area were but little known, so 

 that the materials for the comparison of the recent and fossil faunas 

 were quite insufficient. But Professor Duncan attacked the subject 

 with characteristic energy, and his sound common sense enabled him 

 to avoid many a pitfall ; his memoir was certainly a most valuable 

 addition to our knowledge of the later Tertiary Corals. This work 

 was followed by a long Jist of memoirs, in which he describes the 

 Coral faunas (especially the Cainozoic) of England, Australia, Tas- 

 mania, India, Java, Arabia, and Malta. His " British Fossil Corals " 

 is probably one of the best contributions published by the Palaaonto- 

 graphical Society ; being so much more modern in its method, and 

 more thorough in its treatment, than the work to which it was issued 

 as a supplement. 



But though Professor Duncan's interests were probably at first 

 rather zoological than geological, he soon became absorbed in the 

 line of work which he had been led by circumstances to select. He 

 soon realised that the description of the anatomical structure and the 

 determination of the systematic position of a fossil did not constitute 

 the sole duties of a palaeontologist ; with him these were but prelimi- 

 nary to the consideration of the affinities of faunas and their bearing 

 on the physical geography of the past. He was a palaeontologist in the 

 truest sense of the word not a morphologist who happened to study 

 extinct forms, but a geologist who used fossils as a petrologist uses 

 minerals. Hence his early work on the West India Corals com- 

 menced by a detailed study of their conditions of fossilisation, and 

 closed by a discussion of their evidence as to the Cainozoic physio- 

 graphy of the Caribbean region ; similarly, his later studies of the 

 European Corals led to his striking paper on " The Physical 

 Geography of Western Europe during the Mesozoic and Cainozoic 

 Periods elucidated by their Coral Faunae." 



