Xl PROCEEDINGS OP THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [May I9C3, 



Prof. Sollas, in reply, read the following letter which had been 

 forwarded by the recipient : — 



' Mr. Pkesident, — 



' Although the Geological Society, for many years past, has accustomed me to 

 a most benevolent judgment of my scientific work, I feel greatly surprised by the 

 award of the Wollaston Medal, the highest honour which the Council of this illus- 

 trious Society can bestow. I beg to offer my cordial thanks for this distinction, 

 which I thought far beyond the limits of my aspirations. 



' I may proudly confess to have passed a life of earnest and unceasing endeavour 

 in the attempt to understand and to decipher those grand and mysterious docu- 

 ments, wherein the geological history of our mother Earth has been written down by 

 Nature itself ; but I am fully aware of the insignificance of the results obtained. 

 Every word, which it is our good fortune to decipher, involves a new riddle, and so I 

 daily repeat the first scientific experience of my infancy — that the art of spelling is 

 a most difficult one. 



' There are many members in this illustrious corporation to whom I owe a vast 

 debt of scientific information and of personal encouragement. The high honour 

 received at their hands on this daj'will be a stimulus to me for ever-renewed attempts 

 to proceed on my onward way, y^pdc/cw ci'ai'ei 7roA\a ()ioa<jic6nevo$. It will be, 

 indeed, a great satisfaction to me, if the rest of my life's work prove not unworthy 

 of the approbation of this ancient and renowned Society.' 



Award of the Mttrchison Medal. 



The President then presented the Murchison Medal to Dr. Charles 

 Callaway, M.A., addressing him in the following words : — 



Dr. Callaway, — 



Your work among the ancient rocks of Shropshire — Murchison's 

 classical county — commenced as early as 1874, when you brought 

 before this Society evidences of the occurrence of Tremadoc fossils 

 in the so-called ' Bala ' rocks of that area ; but your conclusions were 

 then in advance of the times. In your second paper, published in 

 1878, on a ' New Area of Cambrian Rocks in Shropshire/ however, 

 you not only demonstrated by means of the abundance of fossils the 

 accuracy of those conclusions, but you made that paper the starting- 

 point of those researches which, as afterwards carried out by yourself 

 and others, have effected almost a revolution in our previous know- 

 ledge of the older half of Shropshire geology. 



You first suggested in that paper the Archaean age of the Wrekin 

 volcanic series, and in several subsequent papers you not only 

 showed the extension of these volcanic and Cambrian rocks into the 



