Reports & Proceedings — Geological Society of London, 183 



He writes : — 



"I feel deeply the honour that the Council have conferred upon me. It 

 is specially valuable to me from my long friendship with Prestwich, and 

 because my scientific life has been mainly spent in following up the lines of 

 inquiry which he made his own — the i-ange of the Coal-measures under the 

 Secondary and Tertiary strata of South-Eastern England, the classification 

 of the European Tertiaries, and the problem of the antiquity of man in 

 Britain. With regard to the first, it may be noted that the South-Eastern 

 Coalfield is now clearly defined, and now ranks among the assets of the 

 nation. With regard to the second, the classification by the evolution of 

 the higher mammalia originally intended for Europe is found to apply to 

 the whole of the world. It is now being used by the American geologists 

 (Prof. Osborn and others) to define the complicated subdivisions of the 

 Tertiaries of the New World. With regard to the third, the problem 

 remains now Yery much as it was in the days of Prestwich, and the zeal 

 of the antiquarians and anthropologists to discover the presence of man in 

 deposits older than the Pleistocene Period has been met by the caution of 

 the geologists, with the net result that the Piltdown remains stand as the 

 oldest in the geological record of Great Britain, and that the alleged 

 occurrence of traces of man in the Pliocene and older strata is put to 

 a suspense account. 



" I value, however, the Medal more particularly, as a mark of regard on 

 the part of the Societj^ to which I have been able to contribute but little 

 for many years, owing to my duties in other directions." 



In presenting tlie Lyell Medal to Henry Woods, M.A., F.R.S., 

 the President addressed him as follows: — 



Mr. Woods, — The Council of the Geological Society has selected you for 

 distinction as one who "has deserved well of the Science", and I think 

 that none who has watched j'our career and is acquainted with your work 

 will dissent from that verdict. Your communication to the Societj', in 

 1896, on the Mollusca of the Chalk Rock, set a standard of skilful and 

 accurate diagnosis and description, which has been maintained in all j'our 

 subsequent work, including the important monograph on the Cretaceous 

 Lamellibranchia, published by the Palaeontographical Society. That the 

 philosophical side of Palseontology has also engaged your study is 

 sufficiently proved by such papers as that on the evolution of the genus 

 Tnoceramus ; while that dealing with the igneous rocks of Builth shows 

 that your interests are not wholly comprised within one branch of our 

 science. Your text-book of Palseontologj', based upon practical experience 

 at Cambridge, is valued by other teachers, and your knowledge has always 

 been, as I am well able to testif}-, generously placed at the disposal of 

 fellow-workers. 



It will be, I tru^t, an encouragement to you, as it is certainly a source of 

 gratification to your friends, that so long a record of good work, faithfully 

 pursued for no private end, does not go unrecognized ; and, as an old 

 colleague, I am pleased that it falls to my lot to place the Lyell Medal in 

 your hands as a tangible mark of appreciation. 



Mr. Woods replied in the following words: — 



Mr. President, — Twenty years ago the Council gave me great encourage- 

 ment by awarding to me the Lyell Fund. The present award also comes 

 at a time when encouragement is welcome ; not that I feel any loss of 

 interest in my work— far from it. But in these times one cannot help 

 regretting, amongst other things, that one's special work in the past has 

 little, if any, bearing on matters which are now of practical importance. It 

 is, therefore, encouraging to find that the Council have taken a longer 

 view, and have continued their traditional policy of giving recognition to 

 any and every branch of Geology, whether it has any obvious practical use 

 ■or not. 



