• PROCEEDINGS 



AT THE 



ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING, 

 18th FEBKUARY, 1853. 



Award of the Wollaston Medal and Donation Fund. 



The President, on delivering to Sir Roderick L Murchison the 

 Wollaston Medals awarded to M. d'Archiac and M. de Verneuil, 

 addressed him as follows : — 



Sir Roderick I. Murchison, — I have to request you to trans- 

 mit to M. le Vicomte d'Archiac and to M. de Verneuil the two 

 "Wollaston Medals which have this year been awarded to them by 

 the Council of the Society, " for their numerous valuable contribu- 

 tions to Geology, and especially for their joint Memoir On the 

 Palaeozoic Fossils of the Rhenish Provinces, &c., published in the 

 Transactions of the Society." It is unnecessary for me to enter 

 into any detailed enumeration of the extensive and well-known la- 

 bours of these distinguished geologists, but it would be imbecoming 

 the occasion if I were not to make some brief allusion to them. The 

 researches of M. d'Archiac have extended over a wide geological 

 range. They form the subjects of numerous memoirs, among which 

 I may particularize those on the Cretaceous formations ; his "Essai 

 sur les Coi'relations des Terrai7is Tertiaires du Nord de la France, 

 de la Belgique et de V Angleterre ;" and his "Description yeologique 

 du Bcpartement de I'Aisne." The excellent memoir written in con- 

 junction vdth M. de Verneuil, and published m our own Transactions, 

 "On the Fossils of the Older Deposits of the Rhenish Provinces," is 

 particularly noticed in the award. This memoir, with several others, 

 written conjointly by these eminent fellow-labourers, adds to the 

 justice of the simultaneous awards of these medals the gracefulness 

 of propriety. To these valuable contributions, we must add his 

 History of the Recent Progress of Geology — aAVork equallj^well timed 

 and well executed. The author has brought to a task, — not unfre- 

 quently a difficult and delicate one, — a rare combination of qualifica- 

 tions, — extensive and accurate knowledge of an immense mass of 

 geological memoirs, and great discrimination in the selection of their 

 more important points, united with a sound and impartial judgment 

 in the comparison of the views of different geologists. The result 

 has been a work such that no geological library can be complete 

 without it. 



It is well, that while some geologists are engaged in the minute 

 and detailed examination of particular and limited districts, others 



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