178 
Reports and Rroceedinys — 
ARNUAL GENERAL MEETING. 
II. — February 16th, 1877. — Prof. P. Martin Duncan, M.B., F.R.S., President, in 
the Cbair. 
The Secretaries read the Reports of the Council and of the Library and Museum 
Committee for the year 1876. The position of the Society was described as ex- 
ceedingly satisfactory, and the ineome of the year was stated to have considerably 
exceeded the expenditure. The number of Fellows elected was -fully up to the 
average. The Report further mentioned the hequest to the Society by the late Dr. 
H. C. Barlow of the sum of £500 Consols, the proceeds of which, under the title of 
the “ Barlow-Jameson Fund,” are directed hy the testator to he applied every two 
or three years hy the Council in such manner as may seem to them most conducive to 
the advancement of the science of Geology. It was also announced that Dr. Bigsby, 
F.R.S., F.G.S., had handed to the Council, in order that it rnight he awarded at the 
present meeting, a copy of the medal which he last year proposed to found, and that 
he further proposed to hand over to the Society the sum of £200 to be invested, the 
halance of the proceeds, after paying the cost of striking a medal, to he given 
biennially with the medal, as an aid and incentive to geological research. 
In presenting the Wollaston Gold Medal to Mr. Robert Mailet, C.E., F.R.S., F.G.S., 
the President addressed him as follows : — 
Mr. Mailet, — The Council of the Society has awarded you its principal Medal, 
which, originating with the illustrious Wollaston, has year hy year received an 
increasing value by its reception hy the most distinguished geologists in the world. 
This now famous prize is presented to you in recognition of the results of at least 
forty years of sedulous labour in some of the most important and difficult prohlems in 
Geology. Early in your career you coramenced those studies relating to Earthquakes 
and Volcanos, which have occupied your time and taxed your energies down to the 
present date. From the first you took the correct logical method of investigation of 
phenomena, which were hardly disconnected from the supernatural ; you collected the 
facts and indicated the manner in which you would employ them by your Com- 
munications “ On the Relation of Molecular Forces to Geology,” and “ On the 
Dynamics of Earthquakes, or an attenipt to reduce their ohserved phenomena to 
the known laws of Wave-motion in Solids and Fluids.” Moreover your reports 
“ On the Experimental Determination of the limits of the transit-rate of the propa- 
gation of waves or pulses analogous to those of Earthquakes through solid materials,” 
and on the results of your experiments on a cognate subject on the rocks of Holyhead, 
tended to prepare Science for your theories of the Earthquake-wave, and for the 
estahlishment of that braneh öf knowledge which owes so much to you, namely 
Seismology. Your numerous reports to the British Association for the Advancement 
of Science upon Earthquakes, and your magnificent contribution to Science and 
Literature upon the Neapolitan Earthquake, added immensely to the knowledge of 
the subject ; and your descriptions of the nature of the earth-movement, of the 
comparatively slight depth of the focus of motion, and of the nature and effects of the 
great marine wave, have been pregnant with results in geological theory. Of late 
years your able communication to the Royal Society “ On Yolcnnic Energy ” has been 
very prominently before the physicists and geologists of the Old and the New World. 
Full of admirably elahorated facts, it propounds a theory whose truth may be fairly 
estimated by the constant attention it has received. One of your earliest Communi- 
cations was “ On the Trap-rocks of Galway,” and your latest have been on the same 
subject. In your last essay you have endeavoured to solve the difficult question of 
the peculiar shape of basaltic prisms. In all these researches your employment 
of the exact Sciences has been of necessity ; and it is evident that the procedure has 
not only been most satisfactory in your argument, but that it has afforded a good 
example to those wlio cannot pretend to be geologists without an acquaintance with 
your works. You have followed out the line of research with which you commenced, 
and have done great service to geology, and also in directing the thoughts of 
scientific men towards the cosmical relations of the grandest phenomena of the elobe, 
and the possibility of their explanation bv thermo-dynamics. As a Student of your 
works, and as a teacher of your views, 1 am proud of having this opportunity of 
conferring upon you this well-merited reward. 
Mr. Mailet, in reply, said: — Mr. Fresident, — I am deeply sensible of the great 
lionour which has been conferred upon me by the aw r ard of this Wollaston Medal, the 
highest honour which it is in the power of the Society to bestow. I appreciate this 
