ANNIYEKSAET MEETIHiTG WOLLASTON DONATION EUND. 39 



Somerset, Devonshire, and Cornwall, it has been your province to 

 examine many of the rocks exposed, and in addition to your official 

 work you have contributed several useful accounts of the Palaeozoic, 

 Triassic, and Pleistocene deposits to the Journal of this Society and 

 to other geological publications. In recognition of the good work 

 done by you the Council have authorized me to present you with 

 the balance of the WoUaston Donation Pund. 



Mr. UssHEE, in reply, said : — 



Mr. President, — 



I thank the Council for the recognition of work this Award im- 

 plies, and you, Sir, for your allusions to it. Whatever results I 

 may have obtained in the discharge of my ordinary duties on the 

 Geological Survey are not deserving of reward. The construction 

 of maps may be faithfully performed without obtaining results of 

 moment in the furtherance of geological knowledge ; official require- 

 ments are so engrossing and imperative as to oblige those who, like 

 myself, desire to acquire as competent an acqaintance as possible 

 with the strata on which they are employed, to supplement, by 

 private work, the information acquired in public duty. The results 

 obtained by private investigation, whensoever they contribute to the 

 advancement of our common science, are in themselves rewards. 



The result of my twenty years' experience in geological mapping 

 is this : — the acquirement of patience aiid the entire subordination 

 of theoretical considerations, which should be the outcome of a 

 careful study, collation and comparison of details, and not the 

 working hypothesis to weld them into system during or before the 

 progress of the work. 



This principle I have had to keep in view in Pleistocene work, 

 in dealing with a variable and disturbed series of Triassic rocks, 

 and to a still greater extent in dealing with fossiliferous rocks such 

 as the Lias, Oolites, Carboniferous, and Devonian. I have learned 

 the extreme importance of Palaeontology in investigating disturbed 

 palaeozoic areas, where it appears to me that the evidences of fossils 

 and of stratigraphy should be taken together, and without subordi- 

 nating the one, as a mere adjunct, to the other. 



VOL. XLVI. 



