of Edinburgh, Session 1883 - 84 , 
565 
theorems, Mr Mnir succeeds in drawing together into a compact 
whole a series of highly interesting but hitherto isolated results. 
The Council having awarded the Makdougall-Erishane Prize for 
the period 1880-82 to Professor James Geikie, for his contribu- 
tions to the Geology of the North-West of Europe, including his 
Paper on the Geology of the Faroes, published in the Transactions 
of the Society, 1880-81, the Chairman presented the prize. 
Lord Maclaren, in explaining the grounds of the award, said 
— The Council has awarded the Makdougall-Brisbane Prize to 
Professor James Geikie for his contributions to the geology of the 
north-west of Europe, including his paper on the “ Geology of the 
Faroes,” published in the Transactions of this Society. 
The Society does not need to be informed of Professor Geikie’s 
contributions to geological literature, because — like the great geolo- 
gists of the Scottish school — our professor is able to invest his 
scientific writings with the charm of a flowing and picturesque 
literary style, and his works descriptive of the Great Ice Age and 
of the later Prehistoric Period, when man appears upon the scene ii^ 
the company of the mammoth and cave-bear, have been perhaps as 
widely read as those of his distinguished compatriots Charles Lyell, 
Hugh Miller, and Roderick Murchison. 
But it is not only for their descriptive merits that the writings 
of our prizeman-elect claim our recognition. In his first and per- 
haps most important work. Professor Geikie proposed to himself the 
task of exhibiting the causes of that most remarkable and indubit- 
able phenomenon, the existence of continuous traces of ice-action 
throughout an area which extends laterally over all the elevated land 
of the north-west of Europe, and vertically from the highest moun- 
tain peaks to the water lines of our European shores and valleys. 
I will not undertake to say whether the bold conception of an 
ice-cap or ice-river stretching from the Arctic Circle to the alluvial 
plains of England and Germany originated in the mind of our 
distinguished friend, or whether it was suggested by the discoveries 
in connection with the ice-cap of another planet whose polar surface 
is said to be already better known to science than that of our own 
vrorld. But whether the idea of a northern ice-cap was or was not 
in the air, to Professor Geikie belongs the merit of having siilqected 
that idea to the test of a rigorous scientific examination, and of hav- 
