part 2] ANNIVERSARY MEETING- LYELL FUND, liii 



Awards from the Lyell Geological Fund. 



The President then handed a moiety of the Balance of the 

 Proceeds of the Lyell Geological Fund, awarded to Prof. William 

 Noel Benson, D.Sc, to Dr. H. H. Thomas for transmission to 

 the recipient, addressing him as follows : — 



Dr. Thomas, — 



Like many of Prof. Sir T. W. Edgeworth David's students, 

 Dr. Benson directed his earliest research-work to the study of the 

 petrology of igneous rocks, and it was with the intention of dealing 

 with this phase of the subject only that he began, in 1909, an 

 investigation of the Great Serpentine Belt of New South Wales. 

 Finding it impossible to obtain a complete understanding of the 

 igneous rocks without studying also the associated sedimentary 

 strata, he eventually undertook the examination of all the forma- 

 tions over this large area, some hundred miles in extent, and 

 elucidated the sequence of geological events most successfully. 

 This involved long periods of work in the field, followed by detailed 

 petrological and chemical researches at Cambridge, and the com- 

 parison of Australian material with specimens in the collections 

 •of many Continental universities. Dr. Benson has given us the 

 results of his work in a series of masterly papers, the first of 

 which was published in 1913 ; and in these he added greatly to our 

 knowledge, not only of the geology of the area investigated, but 

 of the origin of serpentine, of the characters of the spilites and 

 keratophyres, and of the process of albitization involved in their 

 formation. 



That his work has been appreciated in the Dominions has been 

 shown from time to time ; latterly by his election to the Presidency 

 of Section C of the Australasian Association for the Advancement 

 of Science at its meeting at Melbourne, and by his appointment as 

 Professor of Geology & Mineralogy at the University of Otago. 

 The award to Dr. Benson of a moiety of the Balance of the Lyell 

 Fund is an indication that we also are not unappreciative of his 

 merit. Will you kindly tell him that our confident hope is that 

 he will continue in New Zealand the good work which he began in 

 Australia ? 



