Reports and Proceedings— 179 
REPORTS AND PROCHEHDINGS. 
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GrotocicaL Society or Lonpon. 
T.—Annual General Meeting, Feb. 20, 1880.—H. C. Sorby, Esq., 
LL.D., F.R.S., the retiring President, occupied the Chair. 
The Secretaries read the Reports of the Council and of the Library 
and Museum Committee for the year 1879, from which it appeared 
that the same indications of depression which had been referred to in 
the previous year’s report still continued, and that the finances of the 
Society were consequently not in so prosperous a condition as could be 
wished. The Council’s Report mentioned the completion of the new 
Catalogue of the Library, the printing of which has been commenced, 
and announced that it would be issued to the Fellows at a low price. 
The President said :—The Council has awarded the Wollaston Gold 
Medal to Professor A. Daubrée, of Paris, F.M.G.S., in recognition of | 
his long and arduous work in geology, and especially for his researches 
on the formation of minerals and on the metamorphism of rocks. We 
must all regret that his pressing duties as President of the French 
Academy prevent his being amongst us to-day. Possibly no one of our 
members more highly appreciates his numerous contributions to physi- 
cal geology than I do myself, since they have been so intimately con- 
nected with my own researches, though carried on in many cases in a 
very different manner. I would more especially allude to the great 
value of the experiments in which he was able to produce several very 
important minerals by the action of water at a high temperature; his 
researches on the formation of well-known zeolites in the old Roman 
brick-work at Plombiéres, and numerous other applications of the 
experimental method to the solution of other important questions con- 
nected with various branches of physical geology. These have cul- 
minated in his recent and most valuable work on experimental geology 
—a work which ought to be the means, as I trust it will be, of intro- 
ducing and still further extending the experimental method of inquiry 
into all branches of our science. 
The medal was placed in the hands of Mr. Bauerman for transmis- 
sion, who in reply said that M. Daubrée desired to testify his gratitude 
to the Society not only for the honour done to him on this occasion, 
but also for the previous award of the Wollaston Fund in 1861, and 
more particularly for the kindly interest expressed by past Presidents, 
the late Sir Roderick Murchison and Mr. Leonard Horner, in the course 
of experimental researches then recently commenced, which had been 
a powerful encouragement to him in following out that particular line 
of work; and he was the more anxious to record this as these dis- 
tinguished leaders of our science were no longer with us. 
The President next handed the Murchison Medal and the proceeds 
of the Murchison Donation Fund to Mr. R. Etheridge, F.R.S., F.G.S. 
(the President-elect), and addressed him as follows :— hk 
Mr. Etheridge,—In this room and before this assembly it is hardly 
necessary for me, in presenting you with the Murchison Medal, to 
enter into any explanations of the reasons which have induced the 
Council to award it to you. Your published writings, the greater part 
