PROCEEDINGS 



AT THE 



ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING, 



16th FEBRUARY 1849. 



Award of the Wollaston Medal and Donation Fund. 



After the Reports of the Council and Committees had been read, 

 the President deUvered the Wollaston Donation Medal to Mr. Prest- 

 wich, addressing him as follows : — 



Mr. Ppestwich, — It is with no slight feeling of satisfaction that, 

 as President of this Society, it becomes my official duty to present 

 you with the highest honour which our body has it in its power to 

 award. We know that though your labours for the promotion of 

 our science are those of one devoted to the search of truth for its own 

 sake, the time which can be thus employed can only be snatched at 

 intervals from the cares of commercial life. Your study of chemistry 

 under our late lamented colleague, Turner, enabled you justly to 

 appreciate the value of that science in its applications to geology. So 

 also with your knowledge of physics, obtained at the same institution, 

 the University College, London, at the same time. With these aids, 

 and a just appreciation of the value of organic remains, you have in- 

 vestigated those districts, for your communications respecting which 

 the Geological Society of London this day presents you with its 

 Palladium Wollaston JNIedal. You first made known to us your re- 

 searches in the coal district of Colebrook Dale, and subsequently 

 those in the tertiary districts of London and Hampshire, — all cha- 

 racterized by that judicious consideration of the conditions obtaining 

 at the time, without which just views respecting the state of the 

 various parts of our earth's surface at different periods can scarcely be 

 obtained. Receive this medal, Mr. Prestwich, as a mark of the high 

 value which this Society sets upon your labours ; and may you long 

 continue to employ that time which you can devote to science in the 

 promotion of the branch of knowledge which we are associated to 

 cultivate. 



On receiving the Medal, Mr. Prestwich replied as follows : — 



Sir, — Allow me to express my grateful acknowledgements for this 



mark of the approbation with which the Council of the Geological 



Society have viewed my past labours. I can assure you that I value 



it highly, and I receive it as a pledge to future exertions in the same 



VOL. V. PART I. h 



