ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. XXIX 



You have alluded to the period of my connection with this Society : 

 twenty-seven years become a serious retrospect to every man. I 

 might perliaps not have thought so much of it, but it now strikes mo 

 that I lived too much in the Castle of Indolence : this Medal almost 

 seems to reproach me by the suggestion that I might and ought to 

 have done more. However, we are told ^' that it is never too late to 

 mend;'* a:ul I hope to bear away this Medal, not as a solatium for 

 labours that are ended, but as an incentive to work which may yet 

 be accomplished. 



Award op the Wollaston Donation-ftjnd. 



In delivering the purse containing the balance of the proceeds of 

 the Wollaston Fund to Professor Huxley, the Chairman said : — 



Mr. Secretary, — In handing to you the purse contauiing the 

 proceeds of the Wollaston Fund, and in requesting you to convey it 

 to Professor 0. Heer, it is enough for me to remind the Meeting 

 that this eminent botanist and entomologist has rendered great 

 services to geology by his remarkable works on the ' Tertiary Insects 

 of Oeningen and Radoboj,' by his ' Tertiary Flora of Switzerland,' by 

 his ' Vegetation and Climate of the Tertiary Period,' and recently by 

 throwing Hght on the true age of the lignite deposit of Bovey Tracey. 

 For these important works Professor Heer is indeed well entitled 

 to any honour we can give him ; and these proceeds are awarded to 

 him to enable him to prosecute with greater ease his praiseworthy and 

 enlightened researches. 



The Chaii-man next, before reading the following letter from tho 

 President, regretting his unavoidable absence in Italy, expressed his 

 sense of the eminent services rendered to the Society since its foun- 

 dation by Mr. Leonard Horner. 



Florence, 11th February, 1862. 

 To Sir Roderick I. Murchison, F.R.S., Vice-President of the Geo- 

 lofjlcal Society, 



My dear Sir Roderick, — You are aware that it was indispensable 

 for me to leave England last autumn to pass the winter in Italy, for 

 tho benefit of a member of my family who had been long in bad 

 health. 



As senior Vice-President, you will, I hope, be in the chair at the 

 ensuing Anniversary, and I request that you will assure the Meeting 

 that no other consideration would have induced mo to absent myself 

 from ray duties as President. The honour conferred upon me of 

 being elected a second time to the highest office in tho Society I 

 felt as a very great distinction. It is now nearly fifty-four years 

 since I began to take an active part in the affairs of tlie Society ; and 

 to have been called upon to exert myself for its lionour and interest, I 

 felt as a renewal of the pleasure of my younger days. 



