XIX 



PROCEEDINGS 



AT THE 



ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING, 



17th FEBRUARY, 1854. 



Award of the Wollaston Medal and Donation Fund. 



After the Reports of the Council had been read, the President, 

 Prof. E. Forbes, on delivering to R. Griffith, Esq., LL.D., F.G.S., 

 the WoUaston Palladium Medal, addressed him as follows : — 



Dr. Griffith, — It is my privilege, and one that I value most 

 highly, to deliver to you the Wollaston Palladium Medal, awarded 

 this year by the Council of the Society to yourself, " for the valuable 

 services rendered by you to geological science, and particularly for 

 your Geological Map of Ireland, the result of your own laborious 

 and judicious researches." 



It has been my fortune to go over no small proportion of the geo- 

 logy of Ireland, and to visit districts in the sister kingdom of the 

 structure of which our information was wholly derived from your 

 labours. I can therefore bear personal testimony to the value and 

 extent of your researches, and express, from my own knowledge of 

 the facts, the admiration that I feel for one of the most remarkable 

 geological maps ever produced by a single geologist. The more 

 your country is explored the more will men of science be astonished 

 by the minuteness of detail contained in that famous work. You 

 have investigated a comitry that in great part was, previously to your 

 labours, a geologically unknown land. The formations with which 

 yovi had to deal presented in many places peculiarities that demanded 

 original thought, and precluded the usually safe guide of analogical 

 comparison. You bravely grappled vnth. your difficulty and showed 

 your powers of generalization and systematization in an arrangement 

 and nomenclature of the Irish rocks, which in many points were 

 highly original, and have been of great use to labourers in the sister 

 kingdom. These will be of more use still, and every year's research 

 convinces those who are now officially engaged in the exploration of 

 Ireland — Sir Henry De la Beche and Mr. Jukes, who are the best 

 witnesses, can bear out what I say — that your great work is a sur- 

 prising monument of observation and skill. The terms " calp " 

 and "yellow sandstone" are important geological divisions of your 

 founding, and you first showed that the Old Red of Ireland was not 

 Silurian. Let me thank you too for the constant attention that you 

 Jiave paid throughout your labours to the observation and collection 



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