PROCEEDINGS 



AT THE 



ANNUAL GENEEAL MEETING, 

 19th FEBRUAEY, 1869. 



AWAED OF THE WoLLASTON MjEDAL. 



The Eeports of the Council and of the Committees having been readj 

 the President, Professor T. H. Huxley, LL.D., E.E.S., handed the 

 "Wollaston Medal to Heney Clifton Soeby, Esq., E.E.S., addressing 

 him as follows : — 



Mr. Soeby, — The Council of the Geological Society has charged 

 me with the pleasant duty of presenting to you the "WoUaston Medal, 

 in signification of the value which all geologists attach to your long- 

 continued and laborious investigations. 



Eor more than eighteen years you have been engaged in researches 

 into the structure of terrestrial rocks and minerals, and of meteor- 

 ites ; a long series of memoirs testifies to your patience, your indus^ 

 try, your ingenuity, and your knowledge of the sciences which bear 

 upon the problems you have attempted to solve ; and the most com- 

 petent judges bear willing witness to the light which you have 

 thrown upon the hidden processes of nature to which these bodies 

 owe their origin and present condition* 



The value of work so honest and so searching as yours cannot be 

 fully estimated by your contemporaries. But already we see that 

 the explanation of slaty cleavage, to which you were led by your 

 study of the intimate structure of the rocks which exhibit that phe^ 

 nomenon, is in full accordance with the conclusions of physical in- 

 vestigators who have approached the question from a very different 

 side, and may now be said to be universally adopted. 



And, finally, it will not escape the attention of the Society, as in 

 marked accordance with the fitness of things, that Wollaston's 

 Medal should be conferred upon a worker in whom is apparent so 

 much of that love of minute research and so much of that power of 

 elucidating the great by the little, which characterized the illustrious 

 founder. 



Mr. Soeby repKed :-^ 



Mr. Peesident and Gentlemen",— Allow me to express my best 

 thanks for the honour you have done me by the award of the Wol- 

 laston Medal ; and allow me, Mr. President, to thank you very sin- 

 cerely for the kind manner in which you have spoken of my researches. 

 I have always contended that the greatest reward that a scientific man 



d 



