PRESENTATION 
OF THE 
ROYAL AWARDS 
TO 
PROFESSOR ALEXANDER DALLAS BA CHE, OF THE UNITED 
STATES; AND CAPTAIN COLLINSON, R.N., THE ARCTIC 
EXPLORER. 
The President read the following statements explanatory of the 
grounds on which the Council had awarded the Royal Medals 
respectively : — 
The Victoria or Patron’s Medal has been adjudicated to Pro- 
fessor Alexander Dallas Bache for his successful labours in carrying 
out the Great Coast Survey of the United States of America. This 
noble work owes its origin, we believe, to the suggestion of those 
enlightened statesmen Jefferson and Gallatin, as early as 1807, and 
was supported in 1809 by the American Philosophical Society, 
when Mr. Hassler, an eminent geometer of Switzerland, then resi- 
dent in the United States, was entrusted with its execution. But 
war, and the time required for the manufacture of the instruments, 
delayed the commencement of the work till 1816. Continuing 
the Survey, with a brief interruption, to 1844, Mr. Hassler was 
then succeeded by our Medallist. 
Operations of this nature will, of course, have been made avail- 
able for a correct delineation of all the surface of the interior ; for 
it is manifest that every triangle referable to a known unit furnishes 
three decided bases with which others may be connected in any 
direction, as long as there remains a terra firma for the instruments 
to stand on ; but these internal operations being more of a domestic 
nature, do not appear to the Council to establish any distinct claim 
to the Medal. The case, however, is very different when we come 
to consider the accurate delineation of such a coast as that of the 
United States, commencing at the State of Maine, comprising no 
less than eighteen states on the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, 
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