182 Beports and Proceedings — Geological Society of London. 



In offering my thanks once more to the Council and also to the Fellows here 

 present for the cordiality with which the Award has heen received, I may truly say 

 that this Medal will always serve as an agreeahle memento of my connection with 

 the Geological Society. So long as I live, it will give me pleasure to take an interest 

 in geological questions, and if I cannot promise to participate very actively in the 

 work of the future, I may at least say, as regards my past work, that this recognition 

 of its merits is most ample, and leaves nothing on my part to be desired. 



The President then handed the balance of the proceeds of the 

 Wollaston Donation Fund to F. A. Bather, Esq., M.A., addressing 

 him as follows : — Mr. Bather, — 



The Council of the Geological Society have voted you the Balance of the WoUaston 

 Fund as an expression of their appreciation of the excellent work in Palfeontology 

 which you are carrying on, and with a view to assist you in the original investigations 

 on the Crinoidea upon which you have expended both much labour and capital. 



From the time you left the University of Oxford and entered the Geological 

 Department of the British Museum in 1887, you have specially studied this group 

 of, fossil organisms ; and in a series of some twenty-seven papers you have not only 

 described many interesting Palseozoic and Mesozoic genera, but have proposed 

 a method of classification, based upon the arrangement of the plates, which wiH be 

 of the greatest assistance to all future workers. 



The paper which you published in 1893 under the auspices of the Royal Swedish 

 Academy, Part I, of the Crinoidea of Gothland (4to, 10 plates, pp. 200), is a work 

 which needs only to be seen and studied to be appreciated, and has been most highly 

 spoken of by eminent palaeontologists at home and abroad. I trust this recognition 

 by the Council of what you have already done may encourage you to still greater 

 efforts, so that it cannot for long be said that our English Crinoidea still need 

 a monographer. 



Mr. Bather replied in the following terms : — Mr. President, — 



After serving the British Museum for two years, I decided to use the knowledge 

 thus gained, and the opportunities there offered, for an exhaustive study of the 

 British Fossil Crinoids, a task to which I was further urged by our miich-mourned 

 Fellow, Herbert Carpenter. I estimated that the work would take fifteen years. 

 Half that time has now passed and I have dealt with onlj a few genera from 

 a single formation. The preliminary studies and other duties, to a few of which 

 you, sir, so kindly alluded, have contracted the time at my disposal within bounds 

 that I long to enlarge. It is the more encoiu'aging that my fellow- workers should 

 honour thus highly the little that I have done, for I am not ashamed to say that 

 the thought of these awards has been, and will be, 



" a spur to priok the sides of my intent." 



The student of science, however, should not think overmuch of contemporary 

 applause. If a palaeontologist, he must wrestle with his fossils, nor let them go 

 until they have yielded all their secrets. Laborious investigation, precise description, 

 accurate and detailed drawings ; these are indispensable if he is to receive aught but 

 abuse from a posterity even more critical than ourselves. In the continuance of 

 work that strives, however ineffectually, to have this character, the present award 

 will be a material and a welcome aid. 



In presenting the Murchison Medal to Horace B. Woodward, 

 Esq., F.K.S., the President addressed him as follows : — Mr. 

 Woodward, — 



The Council have this year adjudged you the Murchison Medal, with the sum of 

 ten guineas, and it is peculiarly appropriate that the award should be made to one 

 who has for so many years zealously worked on the Geological Smwey which Sir 

 Iloderick Murchison, the founder of the medal, so long and ably directed. It may 

 not be generally known that, like your esteemed father, the late Dr. S. P. Woodward, 

 F.G.S. (who was our Sub-curator in 1839), you also commenced your geological 

 career (in November, 1863) as an as,sistant in the Museum of the Geological Society, 

 at Somerset House. During the past 30 years of your labours as a field-geologist, 

 on the Geological Survey of England and Wales, your experiences have been most 

 varied. From Newton Abbot and other parts of Devon, over East Somerset, the 



