PROCEEDINGS 



AT THE 



ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING, 

 16th FEBHUAEY, 1866. 



Award of the Wollaston Medal. 



The Reports of the Council and Committees having been read, the 

 President, William John" Hamilton, Esq., E.R.S., delivered the 

 "WoUaston Medal to Sir Charles Lyell, addressing him as follows : — 



Sir Charles Lyell, — I need hardly say that it is with very great 

 satisfaction that I find it has fallen to my lot to be the means 

 of placing in your hands this WoUaston Medal, which the Council 

 have unanimously awarded to you in recognition of the highly 

 important services you have rendered to the study of Geology by 

 your various original works, and for the masterly and philosophical 

 manner in which you have treated the subject, both in developing 

 the principles and in expounding the elements on which the science 

 of Geology is founded. 



More than five-and-thirty years have now elapsed since you pub- 

 lished the first edition of the ' Principles of Geology,' in which you 

 attempted to explain the former changes of the earth's surface by 

 reference to causes now in operation, and by giving a full and de- 

 tailed view of the modem changes of the earth and its inhabitants. 

 During this period you have published no less than nine editions of 

 this work. In 1838 you published the first edition of the ' Ele- 

 ments of Geology,' consisting of an expansion of the 4th Book of 

 the ^ Principles of Geology,' and containing a description of the monu- 

 ments of ancient changes. Geology in the strictest sense, namely, a de- 

 tailed account of the successive formations of the earth's crust and 

 their imbedded fossils from the oldest crystalline rocks to the beds 

 of the Post- tertiary epoch. Of these ' Elements' you published the 

 sixth edition last year, and I need not here repeat what I stated on 

 a former occasion respecting the vast amount of additional informa- 

 tion it contains as compared with former editions. Indeed, con- 

 sidering the rapid progress of geological study and the close atten- 

 tion you have always paid to every new discovery in all quarters of 

 the globe, it could not weU be otherwise. It is impossible to calcu- 

 late the effect produced by these numerous publications j but it is 



