XXVin PEOCEKDINGrS 01^' THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



Whilst unravelling the complicated interior phenomena of the 

 Welsh rocks, yon were not unmindful of the very different order of 

 phenomena exhibited on their exterior surfaces. Here you showed 

 the vast extent and power of ice-action, and what a glacier-land 

 Wales once was. Eeasoning from the present to the past, you also 

 boldly pushed your ice-batteries far back into geological time, and 

 were the first to bring them to bear on rocks of Permian age. That 

 advanced post you long had to hold alone ; but other geologists have 

 since followed your lead, and we have even lately had evidence in 

 the same direction from Southern Africa, where it is asserted that 

 boulders and glaciated surfaces have been found at the base of the 

 Karoo formation of supposed Triassic age. 



You have also held a prominent place among those who, by their 

 public teaching, have done so much during the last twenty years to 

 advance the cause of our science. To myself personally, whose 

 geological career has run nearly parallel in time with your own, it 

 is a source of much pleasure that it has fallen to my lot to hand you 

 this the highest testimonial the Society has to bestow. 



Prof. Ramsay made the following reply : — 



Mr. President, — I cannot say whether I am more pleased or 

 surprised by the unexpected award to me of the WoUaston Medal 

 by the Council of this Society. Pleased I well may be, not because 

 I ever worked for this or any other honour, but because I feel a 

 sense of satisfaction that the work on which I have been engaged 

 for the last thirty years has been esteemed by my friends and fel- 

 lows of the Council of the Society so highly that they have deemed 

 me a fit recipient of this honour. It is also a special satisfaction to 

 me that this award has been bestowed by the hand of one of my 

 oldest geological friends, who is so universally esteemed and beloved, 

 and is himself so distinguished a contributor to physical and other 

 branches of our science. 



My first endeavour in geology (the construction of a geological 

 map and model of Arran) necessarily drew my attention to the 

 physical part of our science ; and when, consequent upon that work, 

 I was, through the intervention of my old and constant friend Sir 

 Roderick Murchison, appointed by Sir Henry De la Beche to the 

 Geological Survey of Great Britain, my whole subsequent life was 

 thereafter necessarily involved in questions of physical geology ; for 

 no man can work on or conduct the field-work of such a survey who 

 does not, aided by palaeontology, necessarily make that his first aim. 



