PEOCEEDINGS OE THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



THE AJS^jSTIYEESAItY ADDEESS OF THE PRESIDENT, 



"William John Hamilton, Esq., F.E.S. 



I now proceed, in accordance with the practice hitherto observed 

 by my predecessors, and before entering on those observations re- 

 specting the recent progress of geological investigation which it is 

 my duty to lay before yon, to read the Obituary Notices of some of 

 those Fellows of the Society whom we have lost during the past 

 year. 



Mr. Henet Chkistt was the second son of the late Mr. William 

 Miller Christy, of Woodbines, Kingston-upon-Thames, and was born 

 on the 26th of July, 1810. His early life was devoted to business, 

 and he succeeded his father as a Director of the London Joint-Stock 

 Bank. A taste for antiquarian researches led him, however, at an 

 early period to undertake many extensive journeys and expeditions 

 with the view of studying the antiquarian remains of various dis- 

 tricts, and the primitive habits and customs of the more remote 

 tribes of the human race. 



In 1856 he accompanied Mr. Edward Tylor to Mexico. The result 

 of their travels was published by Mr. Tylor in 1861 in a work called 

 ^Anahuac' He subsequently visited the United States, Canada, 

 and British Columbia, picking up information wherever he could 

 find it respecting the habits of the wilder tribes and the earlier in- 

 habitants. Subsequently he visited the East, Algeria, and the 

 north of Africa, Spain, Italy, France, and the Scandinavian king- 

 dom. 



It was at a later period, however, that he turned his atten- 

 tion to that branch of his antiquarian pursuits which brought him 

 into close relationship with this Society, of which he became a Mem- 

 ber in 1858. Carrying back his researches into the antiquity of 

 man's presence on the earth, he was brought into close contact 

 with the relics of the last period of geological history, when Mam- 

 malia, now extinct, appear to have lived during the Postgla- 

 cial period as the cotemporaneous inhabitants in caves and forests 

 of the first tribes of the human race which dwelt in Western 

 Europe. 



The discoveries of Abbeville and of Amiens which had been so 

 ably worked out by Mr. Prestwich, induced Mr. Christy to enter 

 upon a new field of inquiry ; and, in conjunction with his friend M. 

 Lartet, he turned his attention to the caves in the south of France, 

 to which several French geologists had recently been devoting their 

 time and thoughts, and were endeavouring to unravel the mys- 

 tery which at first attached to the discovery of undoubted human 

 implements, and the works of human hands, in close juxta-position 

 with the remains of extinct Mammalia. 



Mr. Christy's exertions were chiefly directed to the examination, 

 with his friend M. Lartet, of the numerous caves which are to be 

 found along the banks of the Vezere in the Department of the Dor- 

 dogne. The enormous collection of materials obtained from these 



