Vol. 52.] ANNIVERSARY MEETING WOLLASTON MEDAL. XXxix 



AWARD OE THE WOLLASTON MEDAL. 



In handing the Wollaston Medal to Sir John Evans, K.C.B., 

 D.C.L., F.R.S., F.L.S., Foreign Secretary (for transmission to 

 Edeard Seess, Ph.D., For.Memb.P.S., For.Memb.G.S., Professor 

 of Geology in the University of Vienna), the President addressed 

 him as follows : — 



Sir John Evans, — 



May I request you in your official capacity, as Foreign Secretary, 

 to receive and transmit to our esteemed Foreign Member, Prof. 

 Eduard Suess, of the University of Vienna, this Medal, founded by 

 that eminent man, Dr. Wollaston, in 1828, ' to promote researches 

 concerning the mineral structure of the earth, and to enable the 

 Council of the Geological Society to reward those individuals of any 

 country, by whom such researches may hereafter be made.' Of the 

 27 occasions on which this Medal has been transmitted to foreigners 

 it has twice before been awarded to Austrian Geologists, namely, 

 in 1857, to the illustrious Barrande, and in 1882, to Franz Eitter 

 von Hauer, Intendant of the Imperial Museum of Natural History 

 in Vienna and Director of the Geological Survey of Austria. 



In speaking of a man so well known as Prof. Suess, words of 

 commendation on my part are hardly needful. For 39 years 

 he has occupied the Chair of Geology in the University of Vienna, 

 and has exercised an influence on the work of the distinguished 

 school of geologists in that city — including such men as Neumayr, 

 Mojsisovics, Fuchs, Waagen, Penck, and many others — which proves 

 him to be a great master of our science. Since 1851 a steady 

 stream of Memoirs, issued by him, has proved him to be a great 

 worker in Geology ; while the intellectual stimulus of his writings 

 on foreign geologists shows him to be a great thinker. He is 

 worthy of this Award, therefore, not only for the work which he has 

 accomplished himself, but by what he has roused others to do, not 

 only by the originality of his own thought, but by the extent to 

 which he has influenced the minds of others. 



Suess is not a specialist. He began work on Graptolites ; he 

 next laid the foundations of the modern classification of the 

 Brachiopoda and Ammonites. Alpine problems roused his interest 

 in Dynamical and Structural Geology, and led to studies of the 

 Austrian and Italian earthquakes, and to his suggestions of the 

 connexion between these and the great circle of European Tertiary 



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