﻿Yol. 64.] ANNIVEKSAEY MEETING MITRCHISON MEDAL. xlv 



by the skill, zeal, and success with which you have for many years 

 pursued the study of fossil plants. Your researches have embraced 

 a wide botanical range and an extended series of geological for- 

 mations, while the materials on which you have worked have come 

 to you from many different and distant regions of the globe. Your 

 studies of the Wealden flora have enabled you to present an ampler 

 and more vivid picture of the vegetation of later Mesozoic time than 

 was before obtainable. Your discussions of the Olossopteris-^ora, 

 and of the European and Eastern Mesozoic floras have been full of 

 suggestion to geologists. It is only by trained and persistent 

 students who, like yourself, have an intimate knowledge of living 

 forms, that the structure and genetic relations of the plants and 

 animals of past time can be satisfactorily elucidated. We wish you 

 many long years of active life, and we confidently expect that, from 

 the Chair of Botany in Cambridge, you will continue to advance the 

 study of Palaeobotany, and will in this way sustain and extend the 

 reputation of the great Cambridge geological school. 



Prof. Sewakd replied as follows : — 



Mr. President, — 



I desire to express my sincere thanks to the Council of the 

 Society for selecting me as the recipient of the Murchison Medal : 

 the news of the award came to me as one of the pleasantest surprises 

 that I have overbad. A student is not supposed to look forward to 

 material rewards for what little he is able to contribute towards the 

 advancement of Natural Knowledge ; but, when a reward comes, it 

 awakens feelings no less pleasurable than those of a school-boy 

 receiving his first prize. I little thought, Sir, when I first became 

 acquainted with your name nearly thirty years ago, that I should 

 ever have the pleasure and privilege of receiving a Medal from your 

 hands. As I have been for some years, officially at least, a botanist, 

 the high compliment paid to me by the Society is the more appre- 

 ciated. This is, perhaps, one of the very few occasions when it is 

 pardonable to speak of oneself. The first stimulus 1 received which 

 made me respond to the attraction of Geology, was supplied by some 

 University Extension Lectures delivered by my oldest geological 

 friend. Dr. Marr. A few years later I began to read Botany at the 

 suggestion of Prof. McKenuy Hughes, a suggestion for which I have 

 every reason to be grateful ; but it was the fascination of Geology 



