ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OP THE PRESIDENT. XXIX 



THE ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT, 



Propessor A. C. Ramsay, E.R.S., &c. 



It has been a frequent custom with the Presidents of this Society 

 to pass in review the principal memoirs that have been published 

 during their years of office, thus giving a sketch of the progress of 

 the science during that period. I would willingly follow this useful 

 practice, were it not that the want of leisure induces me to avail 

 myself of that easier course which some of our Presidents have adopted, 

 namely, to expound what they considered the best view of an im- 

 portant or favourite subject ; and, in doing so, those who listen to 

 or read addresses may probably see reason to congratulate themselves 

 that the method I adopt is one reason why my observations will be 

 brief. But first it is my duty to read the following obituary notices, 

 some of which refer to gentlemen who were among our most distin- 

 guished foreign Members. 



Richard Trench, son of the Very Reverend the Dean of West- 

 minster, was born at Botley, in Hampshire, on February 18, 1836. 

 He received his early education at Rugby, and was afterwards 

 entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took his degree of 

 B.A., and where, in attendance on the lectures of Professor Sedgwick, 

 he first acquired a taste for geology. In the year 1858 he was 

 appointed one of the Assistant-Geologists on the Geological Survey 

 of Great Britain, and in the following year he was elected a Eel- 

 low of this Society. During the two years he remained on the 

 British Survey, he was employed surveying the Oolitic strata near 

 Banbury, and the Eocene beds on and around Bagshot Heath, 

 gaining and retaining the esteem and love of his colleagues by his 

 intelligence and zeal, and the manly frankness, gentleness, and 

 heartiness of his disposition. When, in 1860, he left us to join the 

 Geological Survey of India, there was no one of his colleagues who 

 did not part from him with unwillingness ; and the news of his early 

 death was received with unfeigned sorrow. On the Geological Survey 

 we still often speak of his pleasant ways, and regret that one who 

 promised well sunk under a rapid illness ere there was time for 

 that promise to be fulfilled. He died on the 27th of May, 1861, at 

 Calcutta, aged twenty-five. 



Dr. Carl C^sar von Leonhard, a Privy Councillor, and for many 

 years a Professor in the University of Heidelberg, was born in 1779, 

 at Rumpenheim, near Hanau. In early life, after studying at 

 Marburg and at Gottingen, he was attached to the public service ; 

 but a strong predilection for the natural sciences led him to change 

 his career, and devote himself exclusively to their furtherance. In 

 the first years of this century he was labouring in the field of mine- 

 ralogical literature, and published at Dresden, in 1805-10, his useful 

 manual * Handbuch einer allgemeinen topographischen Mineralogie' ; 

 whilst a few years later he printed, with Selb, a volume of mineralo- 

 gical studies (Niirnberg, 1812). 



