28 PROCEEDINGS OE THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



AWAED OF THE WOLLASTOIT MeDAL. 



The Reports of the Council and of the Committees having been 

 read, the President, Henry Clifton Sorby, Esq., LL.D., E.E.S., 

 presented the Wollaston Gold Medal to Mr. H. Bauerman for 

 transmission to Prof. A. Daurree, P.M.G.S., and addressed him as 

 follows : — ■ 



Mr. Bauerman, — 



The Council has awarded the Wollaston Medal to Professor A. 

 Daitbree, of Paris, in recognition of his long and arduous work 

 in geology, and especially for his researches on the formation of 

 minerals and on the metamorphism of rocks. We must all regret 

 that his pressing duties as President of the French Academy pre- 

 vent his being amongst us to-day, which otherwise, he informs us, 

 would have given him much pleasure. You will kindly transmit 

 the Medal to him, and assure him how highly we value his nu- 

 merous contributions to physical geology. Possibly no one of our 

 members more highly appreciates his labours than I do myself, since 

 they have been so intimately connected with my own researches, 

 though carried on in many cases in a very different manner. I 

 would more especially allude to the great value of the experiments 

 in which he was able to produce several very important minerals 

 by the action of water at a high temperature ; his researches on the 

 formation of well-known Zeolites in the old Roman brick-work at 

 Plombieres ; and numerous other applications of the experimental 

 method to the solution of other important questions connected with 

 various branches of physical geology. These have culminated in his 

 recent and most valuable work on experimental geology — a work 

 which ought to be the means, as, I trust, it will be, of introducing 

 and still further extending the experimental method of inquiry into 

 all branches of our science. 



Mr. Batjerman, in reply, said that the regrets expressed by the 

 President at the absence of the Wollaston Medallist would be 

 shared by every one in the room. M. Daubree had hoped to be 

 present, and it was only within the last few days that he found 

 that official duties connected with the Presidency of the Academy 

 of Sciences prevented his being absent from Paris at this time. 

 He held in his hand a letter in which M. Daubree desired to testify 

 his gratitude to the Society not only for the honour done to him on 

 this occasion, but also for the previous award of the Wollaston Pund 

 in 1861, and more particularly for the kindly interest expressed by 

 our Presidents the late Sir Roderick Murchison and Mr. Leonard 

 Horner in the course of experimental researches then recently com- 

 menced, which had been a powerful encouragement to him in fol- 

 lowing out that particular line of work ; and he was the more 

 anxious to record this as these distinguished leaders of our science 

 were no longer with us. 



