1877.] 



President's Address. 



447 



necessarily condensed, monograph of the geology of North America ; 

 and, it may be added, few treatises on this branch of knowledge show 

 so thorough and practical an acquaintance with all those sciences 

 which are auxiliary to geology, or so extensive and profound a study 

 of the phenomena presented by the existing condition of the globe, 

 from the knowledge of which every rational attempt to reconstruct the 

 past history of the earth, upon the data afforded by its rocks and their 

 organic contents, must start. 



As naturalist to the United States Exploring Expedition, which made 

 a circumnavigatory voyage, under the command of Captain Wilkes, in the 

 years 1838 to 1842, Professor Dana enjoyed unusual opportunities for 

 zoological investigation ; and his remarkable works on the Zoophytes and 

 the Crustacea observed during the voyage testify to the admirable use 

 which he made of those opportunities. Nor has Professor Dana confined 

 himself to the merely descriptive side of zoology ; but, drawing general 

 conclusions from his vast store of accurate observations, he has published 

 views on classification and on questions of general morphology of much 

 originality and breadth of view. 



The Medal was received for Prof. Dana by the Hon. Edwards Pierre- 

 point, United States Minister. The President, in delivering the Medal, 

 expressed his assurance of the esteem and regard in which Prof. Dana 

 was held by the Royal Society, not less for his own scientific achieve- 

 ments than for the liberal aid he has always rendered to other investi- 

 gators. 



A Eoyal Medal has been awarded to Mr. Frederick Augustus Abel, for 

 his physico-chemical researches on gunpowder and explosive agents. 



Mr. Abel's career as a contributor to chemistry commenced about 30 

 years ago. Between 1847 and 1865 he contributed a number of papers 

 to the Chemical Society, which were published in their Journal : some of 

 the investigations were made in conjunction with other chemists ; among 

 these were the action of nitric acid on cumol (1847), and researches on 

 strychnine (1849), when the composition of that alkaloid was finally 

 established. They were followed by papers relating to metallurgy 

 (copper) and analytical processes, one of which, on the application of elec- 

 tricity to the explosions of mines, may have led to his various works on ex- 

 plosives, on which the claims of Mr. Abel for the distinction of a Eoyal 

 Medal mainly rest. So far back as 1863 he directed his attention to 

 the study of gun-cotton in consequence of the development of its manu- 

 facture in Austria for artillery purposes, and in that year communicated to 

 the British Association a report on the preliminary results arrived at 

 by his experiments on the Austrian process, and the products furnished 

 by it. 



In 1866 a memoir was sent to our Society, which was published in the 



