XXU PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



in your hands, requesting that you will convey to M. Hermann von 

 Meyer our high appreciation of the value of his labours, and our 

 gratification at conveying it to him through one so fully able to value 

 the services of a great Palaeontologist. 



Sir C. Lyell thus replied : — 



Mr. President, — It will give me great pleasure to take charge 

 of the Medal which has been awarded by the Geological Society of 

 London to my friend M. Hermann von Meyer. 



The importance of his Palseontological labours is now, as you have 

 truly stated, universally acknowledged ; but for my own part, I con- 

 fess that I should scarcely have been aware of their vast extent had 

 I not enjoyed opportunities of visiting Frankfort from year to year, 

 and seeing the author engaged in his preparations for those mono- 

 graphs on fossil reptiles with which he has enriched our science. I 

 see that one of the most splendid of these elaborate treatises, which 

 contains I believe descriptions and illustrations of about 80 species of 

 Triassic Reptiles, is now lying on our table — a work of which it is 

 not too much to assert, that it would have secured a very high repu- 

 tation for its author had it been the only labour of his life. For this 

 and for his other publications, M. von Meyer has executed all the 

 drawings with his own hand, and has done them all on transparent 

 paper, so that his lithographer, when transferring them to stone, has 

 not had to reverse the figures — a process during which the spirit and 

 accuracy of the originals are often found to suffer. 



Allow me, Sir, in conclusion, again to express to you the satisfac- 

 tion I feel at being requested to transmit this well-earned tribute of 

 our esteem to one of the most distinguished of our Foreign Members. 



The President proceeded :— 



The Council has awarded the second Medal to Mr. James Hall, of 

 New York, as a testimonial of its high opinion of his merits as a pa- 

 laeontologist and geologist. Twenty-one years ago Mr. Hall exhibited 

 his taste for palaeontology by describing two species of Trilobites be- 

 longing to the genus Paradoxides, a genus very remarkable in its con- 

 formation, and which our friend Mr. William Rogers has lately dis- 

 covered in a highly metamorphosed rock, long considered a crystalline 

 schist, near Boston. His notes upon the geology of the Western 

 States soon followed as a testimony to his love of pure geology ; but 

 the palaeontology of New York proved him to be worthy of the re- 

 spect of all lovers of natural science. He has gone steadily forward, 

 and we are now indebted to him for an accurate knowledge of the 

 geology and palaeontology of the great State of New York, which is 

 in itself equal to a large kingdom in magnitude. The last of his 

 works, " Descriptions of New Species of Palaeozoic Fossils from the 

 Lower Helderberg, Oriskany Sandstone, Upper Helderberg, Hamil- 

 ton, and Chemnung groups," published last year, is full of descriptions 

 of new species ; and, although I am myself prone to hesitate respect- 

 ing new species when closely allied to previously known species, the 



