208 
On presenting the prize awarded to Mr. James de Carle Sowerby, 
Dr. Buckland said :-— 
It is with no small pleasure that I rise to perform the duty of 
placing into your hands the award that has been made to you by the 
Council of the Geological Society, of one year’s interest of the Wol- 
laston Fund, in order to facilitate the continuation of your researches 
in Mineral Conchology.—The services are great which have been 
rendered to Geology by the extremely useful and well-timed work 
on fossil shells, which was many years ago begun by your excellent 
father, and continued by him to the end of his life, and has been 
since conducted by yourself; and the association of his name with 
that of Dr. Wollaston, recalis to my mind, as it must to the minds of 
most of my hearers, pleasing and grateful recollections of the bene- 
fits which during their lives they both conferred on this Society, 
and which their works will have extended to all our contemporaries 
and successors in this department of scientific inquiry. It was 
your father’s peculiar merit to be one of those accurate and enthu- 
siastic observers of nature, who have in modern times contributed 
so much to remove from science the rugged and austere aspect 
under which it used to be presented ; and who by facilitating to every 
one the means of advancing pleasantly in its pursuit, have, in an 
essential manner, promoted, and given popularity to the study of 
Botany and Conchology. 
It is to Mineral Conchology, which he so especially promoted, that 
we who are occupied with the investigation of the structure of the 
earth, have in modern times been mainly indebted for evidences 
which have led to the establishment of many of the most important 
stratigraphical distributions, that have been founded on the suc- 
cessive changes in animated nature which are made known to us by 
the study of fossil shells. It was on this foundation that Cuvier and 
Brogniart established their important divisions of the marine and 
freshwater strata of the Tertiary formations, which have since been 
more minutely distributed by Mr. Lyell into the eocene, pliocene, 
and miocene series, according to their relative numbers of extinct 
and recent species of fossil shells. It was on a similar foundation 
that Mr. William Smith rested his identification of the Secondary 
strata of England. It is on the same basis of conchological evidence 
that Mr. Murchison has founded his fourfold subdivisions of the 
Silurian portion of the Transition rocks; and it is chiefly to the illu- 
mination which this branch of Palzontology has shed upon the 
changes that took place on the surface of the earth, whilst its strata 
were in process of formation, that we owe the rapid advances in 
geological knowledge which have been made since the commence- 
ment of the present century. To this rapid progress, arising from 
the introduction of the evidences of mineral Conchology, your own 
publications and those of your family have largely contributed; you 
have further co-operated materially in advancing our inquiries by 
your personal assistance, at all times cheerfully and liberally ren- 
dered, to all your fellow labourers in the same fields of scientific 
research, who stood in need of your aid, for the elucidation of mi- 
