182 Reports & Proceedings — Geological Society of London. 



Sir Archibald Geikie, in reply, said : — 



Mr. President, — No duty at once more honourable and agreeable could be 

 entrusted to a Fellow of this Society than to act as a deputy for one of the 

 most venerable and esteemed of our colleagues and to receive on his behalf the 

 Wollaston Medal, which has been awarded to him in recognition of the value 

 and distinction of his contributions to geological science. I have been favoured 

 with a short statement from Mr. Fisher, which I will now read : — 



"It is indeed a most gratifying surprise to me that the Council of the 

 Geological Society should have considered me worthy of their highest honour, 

 the Wollaston Medal. At my great age (95) I shall not be able to attend and 

 to offer my grateful thanks in person. I think that the Council must have 

 formed a higher opinion of my merits than I have, but I must not quarrel with 

 that. I once had as a pupil a scion of the Wollaston family. He was an 

 entomologist, and wrote a learned work upon the insects of Madeira. He- 

 described the insect-remains which I found in Lexden brick-pit. 



" I am thankful to say that I am still able to take an interest in our science. 

 I am engaged at present in a mathematical investigation of the effect of an 

 elevated plateau, like the Himalayan, when below the horizon of a station, in 

 increasing gravity there. It will have to be taken account of in drawing 

 conclusions from observations on gravity in the plains of India. My friend 

 Davison is helping me with the arithmetic, in which I cannot trust myself. 

 Arithmetic was not taught at Eton when I was there. I am afraid that the 

 chief interest in my problem will be mathematical. In all problems of attraction 

 hitherto the curvature of the earth's surface has been neglected. I have taken 

 account of it, I believe, for the first time." 



In receiving this Medal for transmission to our revered Associate, I should 

 like to add an expression of my own indebtedness to the illuminating suggestive- 

 ness and clear presentation of his contributions to physical geology. It is 

 astonishing and delightful to see him, at his advanced age, still full of mental 

 alertness and enthusiasm, busy as ever in the continuation of the long series 

 of mathematical investigations with which he has enriched geological literature. 

 He has set to all of us a noble example of modest, earnest, and unwearied 

 devotion to the cause of our favourite science. Let us trust that the brave 

 veteran may not only live to complete the research on which he tells us that 

 he is engaged, but prolong for years to come his sunny and beneficent old age. 



The President then presented the Murchison Medal to Mr. George 

 Barrow, F.G.S., addressing him in the following words : — 



Mr. Barrow, — It is a great pleasure to me to hand to one who has been my 

 colleague for many years a tribute paid by the Council of the Geological 

 Society to a life spent in the furtherance of geological science. 



In awarding to you the Murchison Medal they have borne in mind that you 

 commenced your official career by investigations of a part of Yorkshire 

 remarkable both for the development of Lower Mesozoic rocks and for its 

 physical features, and by writing a terse and lucid account of it in the North 

 Cleveland memoir. They remember, too, that after assisting in the mapping 

 of the West Yorkshire dales, you proceeded to the Scottish Highlands, and 

 that by there introducing modern petrographical methods you obtained results 

 which have left a permanent mark in the literature on that fertile source of 

 geological controversy. Your paper in 1893 on an Intrusion of Muscovite- 

 Biotite Gneiss has taken high rank, not only as a storehouse of careful 

 observations on the characters of igneous and metamorphic rocks, but as 

 elucidating the problems connected with hypogene geology. It was followed by 

 announcements of your discovery of chloritoid in Kincardineshire and of the 

 possible occurrence of Silurian strata in Forfarshire ; while in 1904 you threw 

 much light on the difiieult question of the relationship of the Moine Gneisses 

 of Perthshire to the metamorphic rocks of other parts of Scotland. 



On your transference to Devon and Cornwall the experience which you had 

 gained was utilized in unravelling the structure of that tormented region, and 



