206 
The Reports having been read, it was resolved : 
That they be received and entered on the Minutes of the Meet- 
ing, and that such parts of them as the Council may think fit, be 
printed and distributed among the Fellows. 
The President then announced that the Wollaston Medal had 
been awarded to Prof. Dumont, of Liége, for his Memoir, Map, 
and Sections on the Geological Constitution of the Province of 
Liége, published in 1832; and one year’s interest of the Wollaston 
Fund to Mr. James de Carle Sowerby, in order to facilitate the 
continuation of his researches in Mineral Conchology. On present- 
ing the Medal to Dr. Fitton, who had been requested by M. Dumont 
to receive it on his behalf, Dr. Buckland said :— 
Dr. Firton, 
I am highly gratified that it has become my duty on the present 
occasion, to commit to your care as the Representative of our common 
friend, Professor Dumont, the Wollaston Gold Medal, which has 
been awarded to him by the Council of this Society for his Me- 
moir on the Geological Constitution of the province of Liége pub- 
lished at Brussels in 1832. 
The grounds of our tardy recognition in 1840, of the merits 
of a work published so long as eight years ago, are the same that in 
1830, prompted the Judges appointed by the Academy of Brussels, 
to select this Memoir as most worthy of the Prize then proposed by 
that Academy, for the best Geological description of the province 
which has formed the subject of M. Dumont’s successful labours. 
In the work thus doubly crowned, the Author has described the 
mineralogical and zoological characters of the rocks which occupy 
this district, and determined in minute detail, the relative places in 
order of succession, and the superficial extent of each subordinate 
division of the several formations. He has also illustrated the 
same by an accurately coloured Geological Map, and by coloured 
Sections, showing the general disposal of the strata in their original 
order of deposition, and the extraordinary derangements and dis- 
turbances that have subsequently thrown them into a state of almost 
inextricable confusion. In the execution of this work, M. Dumont 
has evidenced unusual powers of discriminating and accurate obser- 
vation, combined with a high capacity of reducing the minutiz of 
local details under the dominion of enlarged and masterly theo- 
retical generalizations. Advancing at the early age of twenty one, 
to a task of gigantic labour, in a region where the unexampled dis- 
turbances, and almost incredible complexity of its component strata 
had baffled the sagacity of the most experienced geologists, this 
extraordinary youth at once withdraws the veil of confusion which 
had hitherto disguised the stratigraphical arrangements of his native 
province, and as it were, by an intuitive touch, reduces to order 
the entangled and almost incredible pheenomena of dislocation, con- 
