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The Reports having been read, it was Resolved : — 



That these Reports be received and entered on the Minutes of the 

 Meeting, and that such parts of them as the Council may think fit, 

 be printed and distributed among the Fellows of the Society. 



The President then delivered the following Address : 

 Gentlemen, 



In the Report which has just been read to you, it is stated in what 

 manner the Council have adjudicated the proceeds of the Wollaston 

 Fund for the present year. To carry into effect that award is the 

 pleasing duly which I now have to perform. It is to me as well as 

 to Mr. Mantell a subject of deep regret that he cannot attend to 

 receive the prize in person. 1 shall deliver it, with your permission, 

 to Mr. Lyell, who will officiate as his representative on this occasion. 



Mr. Lyell. — In the name of the Geological Society I beg to com- 

 mit to your care the proceeds for the present year of a fund be- 

 queathed to us by one of the most eminent philosophers to whom 

 this country has given birth, and by him directed to be applied to 

 the furtherance of geological science. The Council are of opinion 

 that they cannot upon the present occasion more conscientiously 

 discharge the duty imposed upon them, than by awarding this prize 

 to Mr. Mantell. Zealously engaged as he is in the practice of an ar- 

 duous profession, we, his fellow labourers in this Society, have wit- 

 nessed with great satisfaction for a series of years his unceasing en- 

 deavours to unravel the geological phsenomena of the interesting 

 district around him. By long experience Mr. Mantell has acquired 

 so much skill in the dissection, if I may call it so, of fossils, from 

 amidst the matrix that conceals them, that many of the finest speci- 

 mens in that rich and beautiful collection which his liberality has 

 opened to the public, may almost be considered as the works of his 

 hand : his active researches in different branches of natural history, 

 and more especially his investigations in comparative anatomy, preg- 

 nant with inferences and analogies illustrative of the early history 

 of our planet, are convincing proofs of the energy and activity of his 

 mind, of his determined love of knowledge, of his parsimony of time, 

 of his unbounded prodigality of labour. His discovery of the Igua- 

 nodon in 1828, and his determination of the place which it occupied 

 in the scale of animated beings, prove his sagacity and acquaintance 

 at that early period with the principlesof anatomical and zoological 

 science. So strange to the eye of the naturalist were the first 

 discovered remains of this gigantic animal, thatCuvier himself knew 

 not to what genus recent or fossil they could with any propriety 

 be assimilated. Mr. Mantell discerned its relation to the Iguana, 

 and the fortunate and wholly unexpected disinterment which has 

 lately taken place at Maidstone of a considerable assemblage of the 

 fossil bones of this creature, together with the impression of a tooth, 

 confirm in many respects his early conjectures. The Hylseosaurus, 

 also, another extinct genus, was first brought to light by Mr. Man- 

 tell's labours, and correctly illustrated by the application of his ana- 



