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possible. There is one part of our establishment to which I am com- 
pelled, most reluctantly, to apply this remark; I mean, our Library 
and Museum. I fear that we must consider ourselves as under 
the necessity of confining within very narrow limits any assistance 
which can be rendered to those departments from our general funds. 
And yet we cannot look at these parts of our establishment, and 
especially at the Library, without seeing that they do in fact re- 
quire very material additions. Our Library, which ought to possess 
all the best books and maps which bear upon our science, is desti- 
tute of many of them, especially of the more modern works, to an 
extent which we should hardly any of us find tolerable in our 
private libraries. This deficiency interferes materially with the 
utility of the Society, and is indeed inconsistent with its character. 
We shall, I trust, all agree that it is a state of things we ought to 
remedy. At no period of the history of this body has there been 
found wanting, when the occasion demanded it, a liberal and gene- 
rous spirit among its members; and I am fully persuaded that at 
the present day the love of the Society has not waxed cold among 
the Fellows, nor have their purse-strings become rigid. It has ap- 
peared to me, that when a definite list of our deficiencies is laid 
before you, it will not be found difficult for each person to find in 
such a list some article, book or map, which it will gratify him that 
the Society should possess as his gift. In this or in some other 
way I do not doubt that we shall be able to bring up the condition 
of our Library to that which the time and our position require. 
The Council have adjudged the Wollaston medal for the present 
year to Professor Ehrenberg, for his discoveries respecting fossil In- 
fusoria and other microscopic objects contained in the materials of 
the earth’s strata. We all recollect the astonishment with which, 
nearly three years ago, we received the assertion, that large masses 
of rock, and even whole strata, are composed of the remains of mi- 
croscopic animals. ‘This assertion, made at that time by Professor 
Ehrenberg, has now not only been fully confirmed and very greatly 
extended by him, but it has assumed the character of one of the 
most important and striking geological truths which have been 
brought to light in our time: for the connection of the present 
state of the earth with its condition at former periods of its history, 
a problem now always present to the mind of the philosophical 
