PROCEEDINGS 



AT THE 



ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING, 



15th FEBRUARY, 1850. 



Award of the Wollaston Medal and Donation Fund. 



After the Reports of the Council had been read, the President, Sir 

 Charles Lyell, delivered the "Wollaston Palladium Medal to Mr. 

 William Hopkins, M.A., of St. Peter's College, Cambridge, address- 

 ing him as follows : — 



Mr. Hopkins, — The Council have stated in their Report that 

 they have awarded to you the Wollaston Medal of this year for your 

 researches illustrative of the application of Mathematics and Physics 

 to Geology. 



On presenting to you this token of our esteem, I shall take the 

 opportunity of mentioning more fully than the terms of the award 

 could do, those works by which the Council are of opinion that you 

 have earned a just title to this honour. 



Your examination of the limestone district of Derbyshire is the 

 earliest of your geological labours with which I am acquainted. By 

 tracing out in detail the position of the associated beds of trap, pro- 

 vincially called toadstone, you obtained a clue to the structure of 

 that region, and were thus made familiar with the general pheeno- 

 mena of elevation. The contemplation of these phsenomena led you 

 to conceive that all the complex effects of upheaval and dislocation 

 might possibly be referred to a simple cause acting under determinate 

 conditions, and that this cause might be an elevating force, such as 

 the intuniescence of a fluid mass beneath the solid crust operating 

 simultaneously throughout the whole of a disturbed region. It was 

 therefore by first observing in the field the facts to be accounted for, 

 that you were enabled to reduce the problem to such a determinate 

 form, as to bring it under the domain of accurate investigation. 

 Your solution of this problem, contained in your researches on Phy- 

 sical Geology, was published in the Cambridge Transactions, and 

 you endeavoured to show how the law of paralleUsm, so frequently 

 seen in the anticlinal and synclinal folds of strata, might depend on 

 simple mechanical principles. 



VOL, VI. C 



