23 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



Award of the Wollaston Medal. 



The Reports of the Council and of the Committees having been 

 read, the President, Robert Etheridge, Esq., F.R.S., presented 

 the Wollaston Gold Medal to Prof. P. Martin Duncan, M.B. 

 Lond., F.R.S., F.G.S., and addressed him as follows : — 



Professor Duncan, — 



It is with no ordinary pleasure that the Council have awarded to 

 you the Wollaston Medal, the highest honour that it is in their 

 power to bestow, in recognition of the valuable services which you 

 have rendered during so many years to the advancement of Geology, 

 and especially of Palaeontology ; and I may add that it is equally 

 productive of gratification to me that this honour is to be formally 

 conferred upon you by my hands. Since the year 1863 palaeonto- 

 logists have been indebted to you for no fewer than twenty-six 

 memoirs relating to the history, structure, and distribution of the 

 fossil Actinozoa, a group which you have made peculiarly your 

 own by long-continued and most careful researches. Further, you 

 have enriched the publications of the Palaeontographical Society 

 with several most important treatises on the British Fossil Corals, 

 supplementary or, rather, perhaps, complementary to the classical 

 Monograph of MM. Milne-Edwards and Haime. 



These labours alone, and the value of their results, might have 

 justified the Council in awarding you the Wollaston Medal; but 

 besides your researches upon the Actinozoa, we have to point to 

 several important papers upon the fossil Echinodermata, to others 

 relating to subjects of Physical Geology (also freely touched upon 

 in your more special memoirs), and particularly to your exceedingly 

 important work in connexion with the Geological Survey of India, 

 in describing the fossil corals of that Peninsula, and discussing the 

 questions of both zoological and geological interest which naturally 

 arise out of the study of those organisms. Few, indeed, of our 

 Fellows are in a better position to appreciate your valuable labours 

 than myself; scarcely a day passes that I have not occasion to 

 consult one or more of your contributions ; and the more I consult 

 them the more I am convinced of their value. Patiently and un- 

 obtrusively, for nearly twenty years, you have followed out the 

 line of research necessary for the fulfilment of your self-imposed 

 task; you have sacrificed the advantages of professional life to 

 devote your energies to the advancement of science ; for seven 

 years (from 1864 to 1870) you gave the Society the benefit of your 

 services as one of its Honorary Secretaries, and for two years 

 (1876, 1877) you worthily occupied the Presidential Chair. Such 

 considerations as these would not alone, perhaps, have warranted 

 the award of the Council; but the recollection of such services 

 rendered to the Society is hardly out of place, as supplementing 

 those more generally appreciable merits upon which the award was 



