ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OP THE PRESIDENT. 



Award of the Wollaston Donation-fund. 



The President then addressed Mr. H. Woodward, as follows : — 



Mr. Woodward, — I have much pleasure in handing to you the 

 balance of the proceeds of the Wollaston Pund, which the Council 

 have awarded to you with the view of assisting you in your resear- 

 ches on the fossil Crustacea. The evidences of industry and zeal 

 which you have already shown in this field of palseontological re- 

 search, both in the many interesting communications which you 

 have made to this Society and in your other publications, lead us to 

 expect still more important results from your continued investiga- 

 tions. It is this division of labour which tends finally to perfection. 

 And while Mr. Davidson has taken the fossil Brachiopoda under his 

 special charge, Dr. Wright the Echinoderms, and Mr. Salter has done 

 the same with the Trilobites, we gladly leave the remaining Crustacea 

 in your hands, in the confident hope that you will treat them with the 

 same success, and work out their natural affinities and geological limi- 

 tations with the same credit to yourself and benefit to science, which 

 they have already manifested in their respective fields of operation. 

 While assuring you of my own entire satisfaction at this award, I 

 will only add the expression of my sincere wishes for your future 

 prosperity and success. 



Mr. Woodward replied as follows : — 



Mr. President, — In returning thanks to you and to the Council 

 for the honour conferred upon me, I cannot but recall the names of 

 the many able and distinguished geologists who in former years have 

 received the Wollaston Pund, and feel sure it is owing more to your 

 friendly consideration than to my own desert that I am thus 

 favoured. 



Palseontologists have never had greater opportunities for work 

 than at the present time, when so many fresh districts are being- 

 explored, yielding new series of organisms dissimilar from, but re- 

 lated to, the living forms around us. 



We younger naturalists and geologists have an immense advantage 

 over our predecessors, for we enjoy the results of their labours, and 

 find that they have made the way light and the path smooth beneath 

 our feet. New fossils, however, turn up continually, and must be 

 described ; and better examples of old ones, furnishing fresh ma- 

 terial for comparison, need to be examined. 



With the encouragement which you have been pleased to bestow, 

 I hope to add some useful material to the ancient history of the 

 Crustacea, which it is my pleasant task to investigate. 



