Geological Society of London. 185 



benefit of yoiir services as one of its Honorary Secretaries, and for two years (1876 — 

 1877) you worthily occupied the Presidential Chair. Such considerations as these 

 would not alone, perhaps, have warranted the award of the Council ; but the 

 recollection of such services rendered to the Society is hardly out of place, as 

 supplementing those more generally appreciable merits upon which the award was 

 really founded. On aU accounts it is \vith much pleasure that I hand to you the 

 WoUaston Medal. 



Professor Duncan made a short speech acknowledging the pleasure he felt in 

 receiving the Medal. 



The President then presented the Murchtson Meclal to Prof. 

 Archibald Geikie, F.R.S., F.G.S., and addressed him as follows : — 



Prof. Geikie, — If any one Fellow of our Society more than another could be 

 selected to receive the Murchison Medal for his valuable contributions to geology, it 

 would be yourself ; since no man living has contributed more to the advancement of 

 that science which it is the special object of our Society to cultivate and diffuse. 

 Your labours in the field connected with your duties as Director of the Geological 

 Survey of Scotland, your learned and valuable contributions to the Journal of our 

 Society, the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and the Glasgow 

 Geological Society, and other publications too numerous to mention, eminently 

 qualify you to be the recipient of the Medal founded by yoiu" late chief and friend 

 Sir Roderick Murchison. To enumerate your contributions to the literature of the 

 geology of Scotland, or your many important wi-itings connected with our science, 

 would lead me too far— some thirty papers, besides educational works, have resulted 

 from your industry and knowledge. Your able paper alone, on the " Old Red 

 Sandstone of Scotland," published in the Transactions of the Royal Society of 

 Edinburgh, would entitle you to the highest consideration of the Society. Able, indeed, 

 are other contributions, especially those " On the Chronology of the Trap Rocks of 

 Scotland," " On the Date of the last Elevation of Central Scotland" (in vol. xviii. of 

 our Journal), "On the Phenomena of Succession amongst the Silurian Rocks of 

 Scotland" (Trans. Glasgow Geol. Soc. vol. iii.), and " On Earth Sculpture." The, 

 Council believed, too, that it would be gratifying to you to receive a mark of their 

 esteem and sense of your untiring labours, the Medal founded by one with whom in 

 earlier life you were closely associated, and whose endowed Chair of Geology in the 

 University of Edinburgh you have been the first to fill. 



Prof. Geikie expressed, in reply, his gratification at the gift of the Murchison 

 Medal. 



The President next handed the Lyell Medal to Mr. Warington 

 W. Smyth, F.R.S., F.G.S., for transmission to Dr. J. W. Dawson, 

 F.R.S., F.G.S., of Montreal, and addressed him as follows : — 



Sir Charles Lyell, in founding the Medal that bears his name, intended that it 

 should serve as a mark of honorary distinction, and as an impression on the part of 

 the governing body of the Society of their opinion that the Medallist has deserved 

 well of science. 1 need hardly say that the Council, in awarding the Lyell Medal to 

 Principal Dawson, have done so with a sincere appreciation of the high value of his 

 truly great labours in the cause of Palaeontology and Geology. When I refer to his 

 published papers, I find that they number nearly 120, and that they give the results 

 of most extensive and valuable researches in various departments of geology, but 

 more especially upon the palaeontology of the Devonian and Carboniferous formations 

 of Northern America. No fewer than 30 of these papers have appeared in the pages 

 of our own Quarterly Journal. Considering the nature of these numerous con- 

 tributions, the Council would have been fully justified in awarding to Dr. Dawson 

 one of its Medals, upon the sole ground of the value of their contents ; but these ai-e 

 far from representing the whole of the results of his incessant activity in the pursuit 

 of science. His ' Acadian Geology,' ' Post-pliocene Geology of Canada,' and 

 'Fossil Plants of the Devonian and Upper Silurian of Canada,' are most valuable 

 contributions to our knowledge of North American Geology ; whilst in his ' Archaia,' 

 'The Dawn of Life,' and other more or less popular writings he has appealed, and 

 worthily, to a wider public. We are indebted to his researches for neai-ly all our 

 knowledge of the fos.sil flora of the Devonian and other Precarboniferous rocks of 

 America, and of the structure and flora of the Nova-Scotian coal-field ; and finally 

 I must refer especially to liis original investigation of the history, natuix, and 



