Vol. 70.] ANNIVERSARY MEETING — MURCHISON MEDAL. Hit 



Mr. Ussher, 



For more than forty years, as a member of the staff of the 

 Geological Survey, you devoted yourself whole-heartedly to the 

 work entrusted to you. Though at one time or another you were 

 engaged in various parts of England, the South-Western Counties 

 are those with which your name is most closely associated. Indeed, 

 among the many distinguished men who have laboured in Cornwall, 

 Devon, and Somerset, you have done more than most to unravel 

 the tangle of Palaeozoic rocks, and to classify the Newer Red rocks 

 there exposed. 



So long ago as 1875 you communicated your first paper on the 

 Trias to this Society, and two years later you followed this up by 

 a comparison of the Triassic development of the South- West of 

 England with those of the Midlands and of Normandy. 



At this time also you began to publish the results of those 

 researches on the Palaeozoic sequence which were destined to fill 

 so large a part of your official career. Partly in association with 

 the late A. Champernowne, and with help derived from the writings 

 of De la Beche and other early workers in the same field, you 

 proceeded with what seemed the almost hopeless task of interpret- 

 ing the structure of the country and defining the limits of the 

 Carboniferous rocks, and of the Upper, Middle, and Lower Devonian 

 groups. It is not possible for me, on this occasion, to trace the 

 steps by which you reached your final conclusions. I can only 

 refer to your published accounts in the Journal of this Society, in 

 the Memoirs of the Geological Survey, and in the Transactions of 

 the Devonshire Association, and assure you that the exceptional 

 difficulty of the task which fell to you, involving as it did a 

 bewildering complexity of structure, difficult palaeontology, and for 

 a time at least an inadequate topographical basis for your work,, 

 is recognized by all geologists. The Council desire to take this, 

 opportunity of testifying their appreciation of your efforts, and oni 

 their behalf I beg to hand you the Murchison Medal. 



Mr. Usshee replied in the following words : — 



Mr. President, — 



I sincerely thank you, the Council, and the Fellows of this 

 Society for the honour thus conferred upon me, and for the 

 unanimity with which it has been bestowed. The work to which, 



