﻿178 Reports and Proceedings — 



ANNUAL GENEEAL MEETING. 



II.— February 16th, 1877.— Prof. P. Martin Duncan, M.B., F.R.S., President, in 

 the Chair. 



The Secretaries read the Reports of the Council and of the Library and Museum 

 Committee for the year 1876. The position of the Society was described as ex- 

 ceedingly satisfactory, and the income of the year was stated to have considerably 

 exceeded the expenditure. The number of Fellows elected was fully up to the 

 average. The Eeport further mentioned the bequest to the Society by the late Dr. 

 H. C. Barlow of the sum of £500 Consols, the proceeds of which, under the title of 

 the " Barlow-Jameson Fund," are directed by the testator to be applied every two 

 or three years by the Council in such manner as may seem to them most conducive to 

 the advancement of the science of Geology. It was also announced that Dr. Bigsby, 

 F.E.S., F.G.S., had handed to the Council, in order that it might be awarded at the 

 present meeting, a copy of the medal which he last year proposed to found, and that 

 he further proposed to hand over to the Society the sum of £200 to be invested, the 

 balance of the proceeds, after paying the cost of striking a medal, to be given 

 biennially with the medal, as an aid and incentive to geological research. 



In presenting the Wollaston Gold Medal to Mr. Robert Mallet, C.E., F.R.S., F.G.S., 

 the President addressed him as follows : — 



Mr. Mallet, — The Council of the Society has awarded you its principal Medal, 

 which, originating with the illustrious Wollaston, has year by year received an 

 increasing value by its reception by the most distinguished geologists in the world. 

 This now famous prize is presented to you in recognition of the results of at least 

 forty years of sedulous labour in some of the most important and difficult problems in 

 Geology. Early in your career you commenced those studies relating to Earthquakes 

 and Volcanos, which have occupied your time and taxed your energies down to the 

 present date. From the first you took the correct logical method of investigation of 

 phenomena, which were hardly disconnected from the supernatural ; you collected the 

 facts and indicated the manner in which you would employ them by your com- 

 munications " On the Relation of Molecular Forces to Geology," and " On the 

 Dynamics of Earthquakes, or an attempt to reduce their observed phenomena to 

 the known laws of Wave-motion in Solids and Fluids." Moreover your reports 

 " On the Experimental Determination of the limits of the transit-rate of the propa- 

 gation of waves or pulses analogous to those of Earthquakes through solid materials," 

 and on the results of your experiments on a cognate subject on the rocks of Holyhead, 

 tended to prepare science for your theories of the Earthquake-wave, and for the 

 establishment of that branch of knowledge which owes so much to" you, namely 

 Seismology. Your numerous reports to the British Association for the Advancement 

 of Science upon Earthquakes, and your magnificent contribution to Science and 

 Literature upon the Neapolitan Earthquake, added immensely to the knowledge of 

 the subject; and your descriptions of the nature of the earth-movement, of the 

 comparatively slight depth of the focus of motion, and of the nature and effects of the 

 great marine wave, have been pregnant with results in geological theory. Of late 

 years your able communication to the Royal Society " On Volcanic Energy" has been 

 very prominently before the physicists and geologists of the Old and the New World. 

 Full of admirably elaborated facts, it propounds a theory whose truth may be fairly 

 estimated by the constant attention it has received. One of your earliest communi- 

 cations was " On the Trap-rocks of Galway," and your latest have been on the same 

 subject. In your last essay you have endeavoured to solve the difficult question of 

 the peculiar shape of basaltic prisms. In all these researches your employment 

 of the exact sciences has been of necessity ; and it is evident that the procedure has 

 not only been most satisfactory in your argument, but that it has afforded a good 

 example to those who cannot pretend to be geologists without an acquaintance with 

 your works. You have followed out the line of research with which you commenced, 

 and have done great service to geology, and also in directing the thoughts of 

 scientific men towards the cosmical relations of the grandest phenomena of the globe, 

 and the possibility of their explanation by thermo-dynamics. As a student of your 

 works, and as a teacher of your views, I am proud of having this opportunity of 

 conferring upon you this well-merited reward. 



Mr. Mallet, in reply, said: — Mr. President, — I am deeply sensible of the great 

 honour wliich has been conferred upon me by the award of this Wollaston Medal, the 

 highest honour which it is in the power of the Society to bestow. I appreciate this 



