3c PROCEEDINGS OF TUE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



THE ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OE THE PRESIDENT, 



J. W. Htjlke, Esq., E.R.S. 



In compliance with a time-honoured custom in our Society which 

 bids us at this, our annual gathering, not leave unnoticed, as if for- 

 gotten, the memories of those of our Eellows whose names death 

 has taken from our roll during the past year, I begin this address 

 with the usual obituary references to those whose works have 

 stamped their features more deeply on our recollection. 



Taking their names in alphabetical order, the first whose loss we 

 lament is the late Prof. A. Leith Adams, M.A., of Queen's College, 

 Cork, elected a Eellow in 1870. He was a good example of a band 

 of earnest students in the ranks of the Army Medical Department 

 who have made good use of the opportunities afforded them on 

 service in every quarter of the globe to cultivate an acquaintance 

 with Nature. His works, amongst which may be mentioned 

 1 Wanderings of a Naturalist in India, the Western Himalayas, and 

 Cashmere/ ' Notes of a Naturalist in the Nile Valley and Malta/ 

 and ' Eield and Forest Rambles in Eastern Canada/ show that 

 he was no laggard in the pursuit of natural history. His contribu- 

 tions " On the Occurrence of Fluviatile Shells at High Levels in the 

 Nile Valley," and on " Miocene Vertebrate Remains from Caves in 

 Malta," are published in our Quarterly Journal ; but his chief work 

 is his memoir " The British Eossil Elephants," in the Palaeonto- 

 graphical Society's Transactions. In 1872 he was elected E.R.S. 

 After his retirement, with the rank of Deputy Surgeon-General, 

 from active service with the army, he held professorships in zoology 

 and natural history in Dublin and in Cork. His death occurred in 

 August last. 



On Thursday the 20th of April there fell asleep in the ripeness 

 of his years, in his quiet country home at Down, in Kent, Charles 

 Darwin, a man whose life and work it is impossible faithfully to por- 

 tray within the brief compass of an obituary notice. This, in his 

 case, is less to be regretted, since to him in an especial degree are 

 applicable those significant words, " He being dead yet speaketh." 

 Endowed with a splendid intellect, a rare nobleness of character, and 

 the most intense love of truth, he devoted a long life to the develop- 

 ment of those pregnant principles of" Evolution " the enunciation of 

 which at first drew down upon him so much opposition, but which 

 he had the rare happiness to live to see generally accepted. His 

 most striking qualities were his wonderful patience in the accumu- 

 lation of facts (no labour was too great, nothing appeared too minute 

 or too trivial for his attention, no suggestion from another seemed 

 unworthy of his consideration), his judicial impartiality (evidenced 

 in his temperate statement of facts and inferences, and his admirable 



