xl PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [vol. lxxiv,. 



Award of the Wollaston Medal. 



In handing the Wollaston Medal, awarded to Dr. Charles 

 Doolittle Walcott, F.M.Gr.S., to Mr. William H. Buckler, 

 Attache to the Embassy of the United States of America in 

 London, for transmission to the recipient, the President addressed 

 him as follows : — 



Mr. Buckler, — 



The Wollaston Medal, the highest honour at the disposal of this 

 Society, is conferred upon Dr. Charles Doolittle Walcott in 

 recognition of his eminent services to Greology and Palaeontology, 

 more particularly among the older fossiliferous rocks of North 

 America. While his administrative work, both, on the United 

 States G-eological Survey and at the Smithsonian Institution, has 

 done much for science in his own country, his personal researches 

 have excited interest and admiration wherever Geology is cul- 

 tivated. 



He has made important contributions to the history of the 

 Algonkian formations, and his discoveries lead us to hope that the 

 less altered of those ancient sediments may ultimately yield more 

 abundant and definite relics of pre- Cambrian life. His detection 

 of fish-remains in the Ordovician rocks of Colorado, again, carried 

 back by a stage the earliest appearance of vertebrates in the suc- 

 cession of life-forms. But it is in the Cambrian strata that 

 Dr. Walcott has found chief scope for his labours, which, pursued 

 principally upon the American continent, have often had a world- 

 wide importance. Realizing the dual part which the exponent of 

 Palaeontology is called upon to sustain, lie has illuminated that 

 science alike in its geological and in its biological aspeet. Under 

 the former head should be mentioned the determination and 

 collation of the stratigraphical sequence in numerous districts, and 

 the light thrown thereby upon the problems of Palseophysiography. 

 In particular. Dr. Walcott's study of the geographical distribution 

 of the Cambrian faunas, establishing the existence of two distinct 

 provinces, marked a signal advance in this field. On the bio- 

 logical side his work has been no less fruitful in results. It is 

 sufficient to recall the series of memoirs dealing with the Trilobites, 

 in which he greatly elucidated the organization of that important 



