ANNIVERSARY MEETING.™ WOLLASTON MEDAL. XXI 



Sir, — The well-merited eulogium you have just pronounced on 

 the scientific labours of Dr. Boue enumerates merits more than 

 enough to entitle any geologist to our highest honour ; but permit 

 me to say, that notwithstanding the length of that list of labours, 

 carried on as they were at his own expense and without fee or re- 

 ward, there is still one subject to which you have not adverted, and 

 which I can estimate the importance of from my own observations, 

 —I mean the researches of our Foreign Associate, seventeen or eight- 

 een years ago, in the Eastern Alps and Carpathians, which led to a 

 most able parallel between these chains. 



In examining the former, I derived such essential advantages from 

 an original Geological Map of that region prepared by Dr. Boue, a 

 copy of which was sent by him to this Society, that it gives me pecu- 

 liar pleasure thus publicly to state, on the part of my fellow-labourer 

 and myself, that, on the question of the age of the Gosau deposits, 

 our antagonist has proved more correct than ourselves ; for we now 

 acknowledge that these strata, at least a large part of them, do not 

 exhibit, as we had supposed, a transition into the tertiary series, but 

 form, as Dr. Boue had asserted, a portion of the cretaceous system. 



Hoping to revisit Austria in the ensuing summer, (and what plea- 

 sure it will give me, I need scarcely say, if my old friend Professor 

 Sedgwick again unites with me,) I shall mdeed. Sir, have the sincerest 

 gratification in conveying to Dr. Boue our WoUaston Medal, which 

 I am sure he will doubly value, when he refers to the names of the 

 eminent foreign geologists who, in common with himself, have re- 

 ceived this token of the approbation and esteem of their British 

 contemporaries. 



The President next addressed Sir Henry De la Beche, Foreign 

 Secretary of the Society, as follows ; — 



Sir Henry De la Beche, 



In the bequest by which Dr. WoUaston established our "Donation 

 Fund," he empowers the Council to apply the annual proceeds, in 

 whole or in part, " in aiding or rewarding the researches of any in- 

 dividual or individuals, of any country." By virtue of that power, 

 and ever anxious to act in accordance with the liberal desire of Dr. 

 WoUaston, the Council have this year awarded the balance of the 

 proceeds, after providing the Medal, amounting to Thirty Pounds, 

 to M. Alcide d'Orbigny, to assist him in the publication of his 

 palaeontological works now in progress. 



The researches of M. Alcide d'Orbigny have contributed new 

 material to all departments of Natural History. During his eight 

 years' sojourn in South America, he devoted himself entirely to the 

 service of science ; and his great work, the 'Voyage dans I'Amerique 

 Meridionale,' will be an enduring monument of his labours. But 

 it is for the services he has rendered to Geology through the ap- 

 plication of his zoological knowledge to the determination and 

 description of fossil remains, that we have especially to be grateful. 

 His ' Paleontologie Fran9aise' is a work as important to the English 

 ^s tQ the French geologist. That part which relates to the qreta- 



c2 



