Vol. 68.] ANNIVEESAEY MEETING WOLLASTON MEDAL. XXxix 



AWAKD OE THE AVoLLASTON MedAL. 



In presenting the Wollaston Medal to Dr. Lazartjs Fletcher, 

 F.E.S., the President addressed him as follows : — 



Dr. Fletcher, — 



In the long list of distinguished men who have received from 

 the Geological Society the Wollaston Medal, whether struck in 

 palladium or in gold, there are not only many geologists of great 

 eminence for their studies in other branches of the science, but a 

 preponderance of those whom the donor doubtless had more 

 particularly in mind in founding his Medal ' to promote researches 

 •concerning the mineral structure of the earth.' The list does not 

 contain the names of many pure mineralogists, but in asking you 

 to accept the Medal this year the Council has desired to place 

 you in company with Bischof, Naumann, Dana, von Hauer, Des- 

 cloizeaux, Story-Maskelyne, and von Groth. Succeeding in the 

 Xeepership of the Miner alogical Department of the British Museum 

 to the real founder of that Department, and the one who made 

 it an expression of the best side of mineralogical science, j^ou 

 impressed your own personality upon it, and left it more valuable, 

 more useful, more representative, more simple. The last was no 

 light task, and it required, in a mathematician of such high culture 

 and ability, an extraordinary and very unusual type of intellect to 

 write an introduction to the study of minerals, and to arrange a 

 collection to illustrate it, without the use of a single mathematical 

 expression ; and yet to produce a book which is at once intelligible 

 to the museum visitor, a scientific guide to the student, and a joy 

 to the professed mineralogist. If this were all it would be a great 

 achievement, but you have done as much for the study of rocks and 

 even of meteorites. And all the time you have been engaged in 

 research of a most painstaking and minutely accurate character 

 •on the constitution of meteorites and of certain obscure and rare 

 minerals, leaving, with characteristic unselfishness, the more 

 attractive problems to your colleagues. If we add to this your 

 theoretic work on the effect of heat on crystals, your elegant 

 treatment of crystallographic optics, culminating in the conception 

 of the optical indicatrix, your fastidious and dainty choice of 

 expression in order to eliminate the slightest trace of ambiguity 

 from your descriptive work, and, finally, your steadfast devotion 



