ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. xliii 



with a public funeral as a mark of the respect in which he was held 

 by the authorities and inhabitants of the district. His loss is the 

 more to be regretted, inasmuch as it disappoints those hopes held 

 forth by my predecessor last year, in allusion to the geological dis- 

 coveries to be expected from Dr. Stanger, who was to have under- 

 taken an official geological exploration of the province of Natal. 



The Rev. H. M. De la Condamine was a m.ember of the 

 Council at the period of his decease. In him we have to deplore the 

 loss of one who was taking an active interest in the progress of the 

 Society, and who had communicated to us only a short time previously 

 some interesting papers on the superficial deposits and drift beds in 

 the neighbourhood of London. Mr. De la Condamine' s first paper 

 read before this Society was, " On the Tertiary Strata and their Dis- 

 locations in the neighbourhood of Blackheath." In this paper, read 

 January 5th, 1850*, it was stated that the cuttings of the North 

 Kent Railway had yielded some good sections of the plastic clay 

 series, and had disclosed an important line of dislocation at Deptford. 

 After describing the effects produced by this dislocation, he states 

 that we have thus a distinct line of demarcation between the lower 

 and middle Eocene periods ; and then observes that the date of the 

 dislocation of the strata must have been posterior to that of the 

 partial denudation of the London clay. 



A second paper was read by Mr. De la Condamine on the 10th 

 March, 1852, *' On a reversed fault at Lewisham." It is accompanied 

 by diagrams illustrating the action of the forces which may have pro- 

 duced the dislocation. The profound mathematical knowledge of 

 the Author, for which he was remarkable, is well exemplified in this 

 paper. On the 4th May, 1853, Mr. De la Condamine read another 

 paper, '* On a Freshwater deposit in the Drift of Huntingdonshire." 



He was actively engaged in preparing other papers for our Society, 

 when we were suddenly deprived of his assistance. One great merit 

 of Mr. De la Condamine was, his taking up some of those minute 

 points which, while they involve very abstruse subjects, oifer less ap- 

 parent attraction, but are not less necessary in solving important 

 geological problems, than the grand phsenomena of igneous action, or 

 the still more interesting labour of working on older beds abounding 

 in the well-preserved remains of organic life. 



Mr. James Hall was the third son of the late Sir James Hall 

 of Dunglas Castle, the President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 

 whose name can never be referred to without calling forth the grati- 

 tude of geologists for his valuable experiments respecting the fusion 

 of rocks under pressure. Our departed associate was the brother of 

 the present Sir John Hall, and of the late Capt. Basil Hall, R.N. 

 Instead of following his father's footsteps in the pursuit of natural 

 science, he devoted himself to the study of the arts, and was more 

 practised in the use of the brush and easel than of the geological 

 hammer. He was, however, a constant attendant at our meetings. 

 His pictures were exhibited at the British Institution and at the 



* Journal, vol. vi. p. 440. 



