ANNIVERSARY MEETING.—WOLLASTON MEDAL. XIX 
which the discretion of that acute and minute philosopher, Dr. Wol- 
laston, has committed to their disposal ; unfettered by the restrictions 
which founders too often impose on their benefactions, and free to 
be awarded to whatever works, by individuals of any nation upon 
earth, they may judge to have been most efficient in promoting the 
progress of Geology. In the impress on this Medal I behold the 
image of that great man with whose friendship I was honoured, 
the memoirs of whose useful life we are impatiently expecting from 
the pen of one of your predecessors in that Chair, Mr. Warburton. 
By this medal of palladium, the metal discovered by Wollaston, I am 
reminded also of the cognate honour that five-and-twenty years ago 
was conferred on me by the Royal Society of London, in the presen- 
tation of the Copley Gold Medal, at the hands of Sir Humphry 
Davy, for my geological discoveries in the Cave of Kirkdale. 
Sir H. Davy and Dr. Wollaston, both supremely pre-eminent as 
discoverers in chemistry, concurred in duly appreciating the import- 
ance of geology; nor is this our science at the present time less 
highly appreciated, nor uncultivated in some of its transcendental | 
branches by a Herschel, a Whewell, and a Babbage. Iam further gra- 
tified to receive this honour simultaneously with the announcement in 
foreign scientific journals, of another honour proposed to be conferred 
on me in Bohemia, conjointly with Mr. Robert Brown and Professor 
Faraday, and with nineteen of the most distinguished cultivators of 
science and literature on the Continent, viz. the degree of a Doctor of 
Philosophy in the University of Prague, at the approaching celebration 
of the five-hundredth year of the foundation of that university. 
This foreign recognition of my labours concurring with the reward 
conferred on me this day by the Council of a Society most competent 
to appreciate the value of researches in geology is indeed most grati- 
fying ; laudari a laudatis viris, is the highest praise attainable in 
human pursuits. The science which forms the subject of our espe- 
cial investigation is, indeed, as a master science, most expansive, 
most comprehensive: its requirements embrace the sciences of 
mineralogy and chemistry, the history also of the entirety of the 
animal and vegetable kingdoms, both incomplete without the addition 
of that large amount of extinct genera and species of animals and 
plants that occur only in a fossil state ; it comprehends also concho- 
logy, comparative anatomy, physical geography, agriculture, and 
natural theology. 
How vast are the requirements of this our master science, Geology, 
with such manifold subordinates! what a mighty miracle is the earth, 
which it is our province and privilege to be permitted to investigate ! 
how highly calculated, in the study of its structure and contents, to 
awaken many of the most exalted feelings of our spiritual nature —feel- 
Ings kindred to those of which original first discoverers of the laws and 
principles that govern the material world must eccasionally be conscious 
—feelings of grateful and humble admiration of the great Author of 
all created things,—which exalt us in the scale of beings, and which I 
once experienced, when, standing on the highest summit of the Mendip 
Hills, at the close of an elaborate investigation of the structure of the 
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