XIX 



PROCEEDINGS 



AT THE 



ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING, 



20th FEBRUARY, 1852. 

 Award of the Wollaston Medal and Donation Fund. 



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

 W. Hopkins, Esq., dehvered the Wollaston Palladium Medal to Dr. 

 W. H. Fitton, F.R.S., F.G.S., addressing him as follows: — 



Dr. Fitton, — It is with great pleasure that I now proceed to 

 perform the duty which devolves upon me of presenting to you the 

 Wollaston Medal, which the Council of the Society has awarded to 

 you. It would be in vain on an occasion like the present to attempt 

 the enumeration of all the publications by which you have aided the 

 advance of our science. During the period of more than forty years, 

 you have contributed to that end, not only by your original papers, 

 but also by sketches of the history of the science, and by reviews of 

 the geological labours of others, always written in a style which ren- 

 dered them attractive, and with a perspicuity which rendered them 

 instructive, to the general reader. The Council, however, could not 

 fail to recognize especially, in the award of this Medal, the merit of 

 those papers in which you so clearly explained the nature of the dif- 

 ferent beds between the Chalk and the Oolites, and their relations to 

 each other—relations which had been previously so imperfectly un- 

 derstood. The Upper Green Sand was sometimes confounded with 

 the Lower Green Sand, the Gault with the Weald Clay, and the Fer- 

 ruginous Sands of the Lower Green Sand with those of the Hastings 

 Sands ; and the distinctions between the Lower Green Sand, the 

 Wealden Clay, and the Hastings Sands were imperfectly compre- 

 hended. In your communication to the * Annals of Philosophy ' in 

 1824, entitled "Enquiries respecting the Geological Relations of the 

 Beds between the Chalk and the Purbeck Limestone in the South of 

 England," you rectified much of this confusion ; and in your excellent 

 and elaborate memoir, entitled *' Observations on some of the Strata 

 between the Chalk and the Oxford Oolite in the South of England," 

 you completely established those general characters of the beds iu 

 question, and the relations between them, which are now universally 

 recognized. I cannot forego the pleasure of bearing personal testi- 

 mony to the accuracy of the details of this memoir, having availed 

 myself of it as a constant guide in my own researches throughout the 

 same district. I must here also make especial mention of your 

 * Stratigraphical Account of the section from Atherfield to Rocken 

 Endj' on the south-west coast of the Isle of Wight, read before this 



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