ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. XXIU 



books, maps and specimens have been augmented by many valuable 

 donations in the past year, and they are becoming more and more 

 available to those who desire to consult them. We have had no 

 meeting since our last Anniversary without one paper at least of con- 

 siderable interest, often more than one ; and several valuable me- 

 moirs are in the possession of the Council, and others in course of pre- 

 paration by the authors, which will be read during the remainder of 

 the present session. Our discussions have been carried on with the 

 same talent, animation and earnestness by which they have usually 

 been characterized, combined with that good humour and kind feel- 

 ing between those maintaining different views, which have prevailed 

 at all times, from the earliest days of the Society. 



We have never met on these occasions without having had to la- 

 ment the loss, by death, of some of our Members ; but happily, this 

 year we have not been deprived of more than half the number of 

 those whose deaths it was the painful duty of the Council to announce 

 to you at our last Anniversary. 



John Bostock, M.D., although not actively engaged in geolo- 

 gical inquiries, was a valuable member of our Society for many years. 

 His name stands high in the medical profession as a physiologist, 

 and he devoted much of his time to chemical research. His scien- 

 tific pursuits embraced a wide field ; he took a warm interest in the 

 objects of this Society, particularly in its early days, and he was 

 elected President in 1 826. We have in our Transactions a short paper 

 by him, read in January 1835, giving the results of an analysis he 

 had made of the water of a boiling spring in the volcanic island of 

 St. Paul in the Indian Ocean. 



The Rev. Richard Hennah was the eldest son of the Vicar 

 of St. Austle in Cornwall ; and after having taken his Bachelor's 

 degree at Oxford, became his father's curate. The place where they 

 resided was in one of the richest mining districts of Cornwall, which 

 gave both a taste for mineralogical pursuits ; they formed a choice 

 collection of the minerals of the county, especially the ores of cop- 

 per and tin, a collection that was well known to all in that county 

 who had similar tastes. In 1804 he was appointed Chaplain to the 

 Garrison of Plymouth, and he held the appointment until his death 

 in 1846, in the 81st year of his age. 



Although he had little opportunity of extending his geological 

 researches beyond the country in the neighbourhood of his residence, 

 we are indebted to him for much valuable information respecting the 

 fossils of the Plymouth Limestone, which during many years he had 

 examined with great diligence and success. He announced his dis- 

 covery of organic remains in that rock in a letter to Mr. Warburton 

 in the autumn of 1814, afterwards published in the fourth volume of 

 the First Series of our ' Transactions' ; and on the 2nd of April ] 819, 

 a paper by him was read, afterwards published in the fifth volume, in 

 which he describes a considerable variety of the remains of Mollusca 

 and of Zoophytes found in various places. In April 1822 he pub- 



