32 I'EOCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



accompanying their successive redistribution. I need hardly add 

 that I regard the award made me this day as a direct encouragement 

 to persevere in the line of research I have chosen. 



Award of the Murchison Medal. 



The President next presented the Murchison Medal to Mr. 

 William Whitaker, B.A., P.G.S., and addressed him as follows : — 



Mr. William Whitaker, — 



To many members of the Geological Survey of Great Britain since 

 the date of its constitution we are indebted for work freely done- — 

 ibeyond the sphere of their more strictly professional duties. Its 

 chiefs, from the days of Sir H. De la Beche to the present distin- 

 guished Director-General, Dr. A. Geikie, have been among the 

 most valued contributors to our Journal, and have enriched geo- 

 logical literature by their longer writings ; while among its other 

 members, few have done more than yourself in following the example 

 of its leaders. On the present occasion I will only allude to 

 the various Memoirs of the Geological Survey, especially that on 

 the London Basin, in which you have taken so large and important 

 a share, and will dwell rather on your contributions to our own 

 Journal and to other publications. Your papers on the western end 

 of the London Basin, and on the Lower London Tertiaries of Kent, 

 deserve to be ranked with the classic memoirs of Prestwich as eluci- 

 dating the geology of what I may call the Home District ; and 

 your last contribution to its deep-seated geology is still too fresh in 

 our memories to need more than a mention. We do not forget your 

 varied and valuable contributions to the Geological Magazine, espe- 

 cially those on the Ped Chalk of Norfolk, on the Water-supply from 

 the Chalk, on the formation of the Chesil Bank (written jointly with 

 Mr. Bristow), a paper, as it seems to me, of remarkable suggestiveness, 

 and last, but by no means least, '* On Subaerial Denudation,'' in 

 which, as remarked by the late Mr. Charles Darwin, you had " the 

 good fortune to bring conviction to the minds" of your fellow- 

 workers by means of " a single memoir." 



We are also greatly indebted to you for your labours in reference 

 to the history of the literature of geology, a task involving not a 

 little labour, which, though of the greatest value to students, is to all 

 unremunerative and would be, to many, exceptionally toilsome. Of 

 this, your care for several years of the Geological Eecord, and the 

 lists of books and memoirs relating to the geology of various counties 

 in England, are conspicuous instances. 



There is a peculiar appropriateness in the award to you of this 

 Medal, founded by Sir Poderick Murchison, one of the illustrious 

 chiefs of your Survey, and I have the greatest pleasure, on behalf of 



