ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. XXI 
After the other proceedings had been completed, and the Officers 
and Council had been elected, the President proceeded to address the 
Meeting. 
ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT, 
SIR HENRY T. DE LA BECHE, V.P.R.S. & L.S. 
GENTLEMEN,—In accordance with the practice established for 
twenty years by my predecessors in this Chair, I have now to ad- 
dress you on the progress of our Society and of our science. This 
is our fortieth anniversary, and the Report of your Council will have 
shown you that our numbers were never greater than at the present 
time. It has been stated to you that there has been a small excess 
of expenditure over income, but this has been shown to have arisen 
from an unforeseen circumstance, and the cause cannot again occur. 
Without it we should have been within our income, and even with it 
we still had a considerable balance in our bankers’ hands, inde- 
pendently of our funded property. The communications to our 
Society have not deteriorated, and the discussions which have followed 
the reading of them have continued to preserve that character for 
good feeling, and desire to arrive at truth, for which they have long 
been known. Finally, the publication of your Quarterly Journal has 
been regular, and few months can now elapse between the reading 
of a memoir in this room and its appearance before the public, an 
advantage of no slight kind, and which cannot but be fully appre- 
ciated by the Fellows of this Society. 
Among the seven deaths which have deprived the Society of its 
ordinary fellows smce the last Anniversary, we have to lament that of 
Mr. CuaninG Pearce. Hewas born at Bradford, Wiltshire, on the 
18th of July, 1811. His desire to collect organic remains commenced 
with his infancy, and it was with difficulty that his nurse could with- 
draw him from the heaps of stone or clay near Bradford, whence he 
obtained and brought to his father various fossils. He probably ac- 
quired this desire from his parent, who, before him, was accustomed 
to search for specimens of the Apiocrinites, commonly known as the 
Bradford encrinite. This disposition to obtain organic remains 
grew with his growth, and by the time his apprenticeship to his 
father, as a surgeon, expired, he had formed a large collection of 
them. He subsequently went to London, and was entered at Guy’s 
Hospital, where he distinguished himself, and obtaimed a prize for 
anatomy. After passing his examinations, which he did with great 
credit, he proceeded to Paris and Switzerland for a short time, and 
upon his return joined his father in his medical practice in and around 
Bradford. Still continuing a zealous and active collector of organic 
remains, he availed himself of every opportunity which his residence 
in a district rich in those remains afforded. From the members of 
the oolitic series, particularly the great oolite, Bradford clay and 
Forest marble, in the immediate vicinity of Bradford, he obtained an 
