PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 



151 



■which were intended as corrections of his own. He concluded by affirming, 

 that, through the aid of Mr. Geikie, the proofs of the truthfulness of his own 

 sections, showing a conformable ascending order from the quartz-rocks and 

 limestones into crystalline and micaceous rocks, had now been extended over 

 such large areas that there could no longer be any misgivings on the subject. 



February 15, 1861. — Annual General Meeting. Leonard Horner, Esq., 

 President, in the Chair. 



The Secretary read the Reports, and the Society both as to numbers and 

 finances was stated to be highly satisfactory. 



The President announced the award of the Wollaston Gold Medal to Professor 

 Dr. H. G. Bronn, of Heidelberg, Foreign Member of the Society, for his long 

 and successful labours in aiding the progress of geological science in general, 

 and more narticularly for the assistance he has afforded to the progress of 

 Palaeontology, as evinced in his " Index Palseontologicus," and especially in his 

 work " On the Laws of the Development of the Organic World." The Presi- 

 dent then announced the award of the Wollaston Donation Fund to M. Daubree, 

 of Strasburg, to aid in the progress of synthetic experiments similar to those 

 of which he had recently given an account, and which he had intimated his 

 intention of continuing, with tne object of tin-owing light upon metamorphic 

 action. 



The President then proceeded to read his Anniversary Address, and com- 

 menced with biographical notices of some of the lately deceased Fellows of the 

 Society, particularly the Rev. Baden Powell, Dr. G. Bnist, Lieut.-Gen. Sir H. 

 E. Banbury, P. J. Martin, Esq., Sir C. Fellows, Prof. J. P. L. Hausmann, &c. 



The Ballot for the Council and Officers was taken, and the President, Leonard 

 Horner, Esq., E.R.S.L. and E., was re-elected. 



February 20, 1801. 



1. " On the Coincidence between Stratification and Foliation in the Crystal- 

 line Rocks of the Highlands." By Sir R. I. Murchison, V.P.G.S., and A. 

 Geikie, Esq., F.G.S. 



Allusion was, in the first place, made to the early opinions of Hutton and 

 Maculloch, who regarded the gneissic and schistose rocks of the Highlands as 

 stratified. Mr. Darwin's view of the nature of the " foliation" of gneiss and 

 schist were then referred to ; and it was insisted that this condition was not to 

 be found in the rocks of the Highlands ; the so-called " foliation" which the late 

 Mr. D. Sharpe had described in 1816 as characterizing the crystalline rocks of 

 that country being, according to the authors, really mineralized stratification. 

 It was then pointed out that, as Prof. Sedgwick had previously insisted on the 

 wide difference between " foliated" or " schistose" and " cleaved" or " slaty" 

 rocks, and as Prof. Ramsay had in 1818 recognised hit erlam mated quartz as 

 being parallel to stratification in the Isle of Arran, " foliation" should be regarded 

 as coincident with stratification, and not with cleavage in the Scottish Highlands. 



After some observations on the occurrence of cleavage in slates at Dunk eld, 

 Easdale, Ballahulish, and near the Spittal of Glenshee, the authors stated their 

 belief that all the " foliation" of the crystalline rocks of the Highlauds is no- 

 thing more than lamination due to the sedimentary origin of deposits, in which 

 sand, clay, lime, mica, &c, have subsequently been more or less altered, and 

 that the "arches of foliation" described by Mr. D. Sharpe (Phil. Trans. 1852) 

 correspond in a general way with the parallel anticlinal axes shown by the authors 

 in a former paper to exist in the Highlands. They remarked, that the syn- 

 clinal troughs, however, are not expressed in Mr. Sharpe' s figures, and that he 

 has omitted the bands of limestone which they refer to as an important evidence 

 of the stratification of the district. They also pointed out the acknowledged 

 difficulty which the quartzites presented to Mr. Sharpe, but which readilly fall 

 into the system of undulated strata that they have described. One of the 



