1864.] 



Presidents Address. 



505 



I proceed to announce tlie awards which the Council has made of the 

 Medals in the present year ; and to state the grounds on which those 

 awards have been made. 



The Copley Medal has been awarded to Charles Darwin, Esq., F.E.S., 

 for his important researches in Greology, Zoology, and Botanical Phy- 

 siology. 



In 1832 Captain FitzEoy, commissioned by the Admiralty to pro- 

 ceed in command of the ' Beagle,' on a Voyage of Survey to the 

 Southern Hemisphere, liberally offered, in the interest of science, to 

 give up half his cabin to any qualified naturalist who would volunteer 

 to serve on the Expedition, no remuneration being attached to the duty. 

 Mr. Charles Darwin, then a ripe student at Cambridge, ardently devoted 

 to the study of natural history, having heard of the offer, like Sir Joseph 

 Banks, in the earlier of Cook's Voyages, eagerly came forward as a 

 volunteer. The voyage of the ' Beagle' extended over the consecutive 

 years from 1832 to 1836, and embraced regions presenting such fertile 

 fields for research in the Volcanic, Coral, and other Islands of the Atlan- 

 tic and Pacific Oceans, that the results of his observations actively occu- 

 pied, after his return, ten years of Mr. Darwin's time in publication ; 

 and have since mainly suggested and determined the most prominent 

 of his latest labours. His scientific works and memoirs have included 

 a very wide range of subjects, which may be classified under the heads 

 of Greology, Zoology, Physiological Botany, Physical Greography, and 

 Genetic Biology, each of which he has enriched with important original 

 contributions. The award of the Copley Medal has been founded 

 on Mr. Darwin's researches in the three first-named branches of 

 science. 



Geology. — Mr. Darwin has been preeminently successful in the solu- 

 tion of a great problem in physical geography, and in applying it to the 

 explanation of geological phenomena, by his important work on the 

 Structure and Distribution of Coral Eeefs, which appeared in 1842. 

 The successive voyages of many eminent navigators had shown that 

 vast tracts in the deepest parts of the Pacific and Indian Oceans were 

 studded with circular groups of Coral Islets enclosing lagoons ; and that 

 long detached reefs of the same formation flanked lines of coast in a 

 nearly unbroken stretch of about 1000 miles. The reefs and islands 

 have been carefully mapped and surveyed; and the different forms 

 exhibited by them had been accurately classified under the names of 

 " Atoll Islands," " Encircling Eeefs," " Barrier Eeefs," and " Fringing 

 or Shore Eeefs." Eminent naturalists had observed the habits and mode 

 of growth of the Zoophytes in the most favourable localities ; and the 

 comparatively shallow depths at which the reef-building species live 

 had been determined. But no satisfactory explanation of the pheno- 

 mena was arrived at — why Atolls assumed their peculiar form, and why 

 Barrier Eeefs included broad lagoon channels between them and the 



