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PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



THE ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OP THE PRESIDENT, 

 Professor J. "W. Judd, E.R.S. 



Gentlemen, 



My next duty is the sad one of glancing over our muster-roll, 

 and taking note of the gaps left in our ranks by those who, since 

 our last Anniversary, have fallen before the hand of death. 



In the Right Honourable William Willotjghby Cole, third Eael 

 of Enniskillen, we have lost a link with the past. He was elected 

 a Fellow of this Society so far back as the year 1828, and at the 

 time of his death was with one exception our oldest Eellow — that 

 exception being the truly Venerable Archdeacon Philpot, who was 

 elected in 1821, and who still survives as the £ father of the Society.' 

 Lord Cole, as he was called before the death of his father in 1840, 

 was born in 1807, and was educated at Harrow, and at Christchurch, 

 Oxford. At the University he came under the influence and teach- 

 ing of Buckland and Conybeare, and formed a friendship, which 

 became a life-long one, with the late Sir Philip Egerton. The two 

 friends determined to devote their attention to the collection and 

 study of fossil fishes, and with this end in view they travelled to- 

 gether to Solenhofen, (Eningen, Monte Bolca, and other places, 

 where the traces of ancient ichthyic life might be sought for. Among 

 the stores of specimens thus patiently collected during many years, 

 both at home and abroad, Agassiz found ready to his hand the 

 materials for his famous monographs. The Cole and Egerton Col- 

 lections, now appropriately united, occupy one of the galleries of 

 our National Museum, forming the most suitable and enduring 

 monument of the two friends, who were indeed " lovely and pleasant 

 in their lives." 



Lord Enniskillen served upon the Council of this Society on many 

 occasions between the years 1832 and 1867. Of a singularly modest 

 disposition, he did not contribute largely to the literature of science, 

 his only published memoir being a catalogue of the Agassizian types, 

 no less than 154 in number, which existed in his collection ; this 

 memoir concludes with a characteristic invitation to ichthyologists to 

 come to Florence Court to study his collections. 



In spite of his sad infirmity, a constantly increasing weakness of 

 vision, he found pleasure to the last in the pursuit of his favourite 



