Geological Society of London. 179 



The question as to the desirability of retaining the Society's 

 Museum had formed the subject of long and earnest deliberations by 

 the Council, and, in accordance with the report of a Special Com- 

 mittee, the Trustees of the British Museum had been asked whether 

 they would undertake to house and care for the collections, keeping 

 type-specimens and specimens illustrative of papers read before the 

 Society distinct, defraying also the expenses of transference. To 

 these conditions the Trustees had assented, and the matter will no 

 doubt before long be submitted to the Fellows for their decision 

 at a special general meeting. • 



The proposed introduction of the electric light and redecoration 

 of the Society's apartments was briefly referred to ; and, in con- 

 clusion, the awards of the various medals and proceeds of donation 

 funds in the gift of the Society were announced. 



The report of the Library Committee enumerated the large 

 additions made during the past year to the Society's library, and 

 stated that the manuscript card catalogue of the geological maps 

 and sections was now practically completed. 



In handing the Wollaston Medal to Sir John Evans, K.C.B., 

 D.C.L., F.R.S., F.L.S., Foreign Secretary (for transmission to 

 Eduard Suess, Ph.D., For.Memb.R.S., For.Memb.G.S., Professor of 

 Geology in the University of Vienna), the President addressed him 

 as follows : — Sir John Evans, — 



May I request you, in your official capacity as Foreign Secretary, to receive and 

 transmit to our esteemed Foreign Member, Prof. Eduard Suess, of the University 

 of Vienna, this Medal, founded by that eminent man, Dr. "Wollaston, in 1828, "to 

 promote researches concerning the mineral structure of the earth, and to enable the 

 Council of the Geological Society to reward those individuals of any country, by 

 whom such researches may hereafter be made." Of the 27 occasions on which this 

 Medal has been transmitted to foreigners, it has twice before been awarded to Austrian 

 geologists, namely, in 1857, to the illustrious Barrande, and in 1882, to Franz 

 Bitter von Hauer, Intendant of the Imperial Museum of Natural History in Vienna 

 and Director of the Geological Survey of Austria. 



In speaking of a man so well known as Prof. Suess, words of commendation on 

 my part are hardly needful. For 39 years he has occupied the Chair of Geology 

 in the University of Vienna, and has exercised an influence on the work of the 

 distinguished school of geologists in that city— including such men as Neumayr, 

 Mojsisovics, Fuchs, Waagen, Penck, and many others — which proves him to be 

 a great master of our science. Since 1851 a steady stream of memoirs, issued by 

 him, has proved him to be a great worker in geology ; while the intellectual stimulus 

 of his writings on foreign geologists shows him to be a great thinker. He is worthy 

 of this award, therefore, not only for the work which he has accomplished himself, 

 but by what he has roused others to do, not only by the originality of his own 

 thought, but by the extent which he has influenced the mind of others. 



Suess is not a specialist. He began work on Graptolites ; he next laid the 

 foundations of the modern classification of the Brachiopoda and Ammonites. Alpine 

 problems roused his interest in dynamical and structural geology, and led to studies 

 of the Austrian and Italian earthquakes, and to his suggestion of the connection 

 between these and the great circle of European Tertiary volcanoes and the elevation 

 of the Alps. Work on the complex Tertiaries of the Vienna Basin and a study of 

 the Mediterranean littoral geology led to his researches in Faunistic Paleontology, 

 and so prepared the way for his pupil Neumayr. 



Suess's varied knowledge, penetrative insight, and suggestive originality are 

 perhaps best exhibited in his "Antlitz der Erde," wherein he tried to show the 

 main factors and methods that have ruled in geographical evolution. 



The intimate union thus established between the problems of geology aud 



