182 Reports and Proceedings. 



ever worked for this or any other honour, but because I feel a sense 

 of satisfaction that the work on which I have been engaged for the 

 last thirty years has been esteemed by my friends and fellows of the 

 Council of the Society so highly, that they have deemed me a fit 

 recipient of this honour. It is also a special satisfaction to me that 

 this award has been bestowed by the hand of one of my oldest 

 geological friends, who is so universally esteemed and beloved, and 

 is himself so distinguished a contributor to physical and other 

 branches of our science. 



My first endeavour in geology (the construction of a geological 

 map and model of Arran) necessarily drew my attention to the 

 physical part of our science ; and when, consequent upon that work, 

 I was, through the intervention of my old and constant friend, Sir 

 Eoderick Murchison, appointed by Sir Henry de la Beche to the 

 Geological Survey of Great Britain, my whole subsequent life was 

 thereafter necessarily involved in questions of physical geology, for 

 no man can work on or conduct the field-work of such a Survey who 

 does not, aided by palaeontology, necessarily make that his first aim. 

 If some of my theories, induced by that work, were long in being 

 recognized, the recognition has been all the more welcome when it 

 came. Probably I never should have been able to do what I have 

 done but for the wise example of my old master Sir Henry himself, 

 in his time the best thinker in England on the physical branch 

 of our science, and to whose remarkable work, " Eesearches in 

 Theoretical Geology," all geologists are to this day indebted. 



The papers which I have written are mere offshoots from my 

 heavier work on the Geological Survey. Perhaps they are enough 

 for the readers ; but I wish they had been more numerous, for I 

 certainly have had many more in my mind. Two of these, on old 

 physical geographies, I have lately given to the Society ; and if they 

 should be printed, I should be well pleased should they soon or late 

 be found worthy. The present physical geography of the world is 

 but the sequel of older physical geographies ; and to make out the 

 history of these is one of the ultimate aims of geology. These are 

 the subjects I have striven to master in part. I consider your award 

 as a sign that I have had some success ; and if, before I cease to 

 work, I have a little more, I may well be content. 



The President then presented the Balance of the Proceeds of the 

 Wollaston Donation Fund to Eobert Etheridge, Esq,, F.G.S. in aid 

 of the publication of his great Stratigraphical Catalogue of British 

 Fossils, and addressed him as follows : — 



Mr. Etheridge, — The Council of the Society has awarded to you 

 the Proceeds of the Wollaston Fund, to aid in prosecuting your 

 valuable work on the Fossils of the British Islands, stratigraphically 

 arranged. In this work, on which you have been engaged during 

 the last eight years, and which occupies nine volumes of MS., repre- 

 senting as many geological groups, you give the natural-history lists 

 of each group, and trace the history of each species both in time 

 and space. Of the magnitude of the work few can have any idea, 

 nor would many have an idea of the marvellous extent of past life 



