350 



The President delivered the following Address : 



Before the present session closes, as it is now about to do, I am 

 to inform you, that your Council have continued to consider the 

 expediency of awarding any medal or medals, from the resources of 

 the Cunningham Fund, to any of the papers which had been com- 

 municated to us for publication, within the last few years, and which 

 had not previously been so distinguished ; adopting still the same 

 plan of triennial cycles, and the same principles connected with that 

 plan, which have been announced to you on former occasions ; and 

 thinking themselves bound to lean rather to the side of caution, than 

 to that of indulgence, in deliberating on questions of this kind. 

 The award of a medal, in the name of a learned body, is attended 

 with a grave responsibility. It does not indeed pronounce, in the 

 name of the Society, on the rigorous accuracy, or perfect novelty, 

 of the paper which is thus marked out ; but it at least offers the 

 peculiar thanks of that Society to the author of that paper, and 

 expresses a desire, on the part of the body, to be connected, to a 

 peculiar degree, in present observation and in future history, with 

 the communication for which the honour is awarded. The with- 

 holding of a medal is, for the converse reason, no expression of 

 unfavourable opinion, nor any denial of the existence of a large 

 share of positive merit in the paper or papers which it is thus for- 

 borne to distinguish : even when the principle of competition does 

 not happen to come into play, and when no other essay, of the 

 same class and cycle, is adjudged to have superior pretensions. It 

 has, however, appeared to your Council, that they were authorized 

 and bound to award a medal to Mr. Petrie, for his Paper on the* 

 History and Antiquities of Tara Hill, printed in the Second Part of 

 the Eighteenth Volume of the Transactions of this Academy ; as 

 being, in their opinion, the most important of those which were 

 communicated to us, during the three years ending with December, 

 1838, in the departments of Polite Literature and Antiquities; and 

 as possessing also such amount of positive merit and interest as to 

 entitle it to this mark of distinction. Having attended the discus- 

 sions which took place in the Committees on the merits of the va- 

 rious papers, and on Mr. Petrie's Essay in particular, I shall venture 



