ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. XXV 
to have sustained bodily injury. From her father, who appears to 
have been the first to collect and sell fossils in that neighbourhood, 
she learnt to search for and obtain them. Her future life was 
dedicated to this pursuit, by which she gained her livelihood; and 
there are those among us in this room who know well how to appre- 
ciate the skill she employed, (from her knowledge of the various 
works as they appeared on the subject,) in developing the remains of 
the many fine skeletons of Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri, which with- 
out her care would never have been presented to comparative anato- 
mists in the uninjured form so desirable for their examination. The 
talents and good conduct of Mary Anning made her many friends ; 
she received a small sum of money for her services, at the intercession 
of a member of this Society with Lord Melbourne, when that noble- 
man was premier. This, with some additional aid, was expended 
upon an annuity, and with it, the kind assistance of friends at Lyme 
Regis, and some little aid derived from the sale of fossils, when her 
health permitted her to obtain them, she bore with fortitude the 
progress of a cancer on her breast, until she finally sunk beneath its 
ravages on the 9th of March, 1847. 
GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON. 
With respect to the progress of Geology during the past year, and 
more especially in this country, it may be desirable in the first in- 
stance to take a survey of the manner in which our Society may have 
contributed towards it. For this purpose we may conveniently 
divide the general subject into— 
1. Investigations respecting the accumulation of mimeral matter 
now taking place on the surface of the earth, mechanically and che- 
mically, by aqueous and igneous means. 
2. Researches connected with the mode in which mineral matter 
has been accumulated in previous geological times. 
3. The manner in which the remains of animal life at present ex- 
isting may be entombed amid the accumulations of mmeral sub- 
stances now in progress. 
4. Ancient life, or Paleontology. 
5. Observations respecting the mode in which the remains of an- 
cient life may have been mingled with the mineral deposits of former 
geological periods. 
6. Descriptions of the superposition of rocks, their supposed equi- 
valents in different regions, and general classifications of them. 
7. The movements which the mineral masses may have sustained 
subsequently to their accumulation. 
8. The various mineral changes and modifications these mimeral 
masses may have suffered since their accumulation, either before or 
after any movements they may have sustained. 
Under the first head there has been nothing communicated to the 
Society during the past year, except an incidental notice by Captain 
Vicary in his paper on the geology of parts of Sinde, wherein, de- 
scribing the deposits at the harbour of Kurrachee, he mentions the 
