211 
Our Wollaston Medal has been awarded to Professor Dumont, 
for his Map, Sections and Memoir on the Geological Constitution 
of the Province of Liége, published in 1832. And one year’s interest 
of the Wollaston Fund has been presented to Mr. James De Carle 
Sowerby, to facilitate the continuation of his researches in Mineral 
Conchology. 
More than a quarter of a century has now elapsed since I became 
a Member of this Society ; and fifteen years have passed since I was 
first placed, by your kindness, in the honourable position of filling 
this Chair, at that important period of our history when we received 
the national recognition of a Royal Charter. I shall never cease 
to consider it one of the brightest rewards of my labours in geology, 
that my name is enrolled in that charter, as the first President of the 
Society in its corporate capacity. 
Since that important epoch, our chartered body has received from 
the Government of the country the valuable sanction and advantage 
of an establishment in the very convenient apartments of Somerset 
House, which we now occupy. The number and character of the 
scientific labourers who have joined our ranks, and the volumes 
added to our Transactions, since these events, show that such en- 
couragements have not been conferred on a society disposed to 
slumber under the sunshine of prosperity ; but that, aided by these 
advantages, we have endeavoured to maintain a steadily progressive 
course, in the great work of illustrating the physical structure of the 
~ earth. 
It is not my duty, on the present occasion, to notice geological 
memoirs or subjects which belong to years preceding that wherein I 
entered upon my present office. The usual practice rather con- 
fines me to the most remarkable events of the last twelve months, 
during which I have had the honour to fill this chair. 
MUSEUM OF G@CONOMIC GEOLOGY. 
Among the most important of these events, we recognise with 
gratitude, and confident anticipation of great advantage, both to 
science and the arts, the establishment, by Her Majesty’s Govern- 
ment, of an institution hitherto unknown in England, namely, a 
