Abstract
LONDON Geological Society, February 19—Annual General Meeting.—Prof. T. O. Bonney, F.R.S., President, in the chair. The Secretary read the Reports of the Council and of the Library and Museum Committee for the year 1885. In the former the Council stated that they had the pleasure of congratulating the Society upon an improvement in the state of its affairs, both from a financial point of view and on account of an increase in the number of Fellows. The number of Fellows elected during the year was 54, and the total accession amounted to 51; while the losses by death, resignation, &c., amounted to 46, making an increase of 5 in the number of Fellows. The number of contributing Fellows was increased by 15. The balance-sheet showed an excess of income over expenditure during the year of 347l. 18s. 2d. The Council's Report further announced the awards of the various medals and of the proceeds of the donation funds in the gift of the Society. In handing the Wollaston Gold Medal to Mr. Warington W. Smyth, F.R.S., for transmission to Prof. A. L. O. Des Cloizeaux, the President addressed him as follows:—Mr. Warington Smyth,—In the absence, which we much regret, of Prof. Des Cloizeaux, I must request you to transmit to him this medal. Geology is the child of two parents—mineralogy and biology. If we look to the latter to bid the dry bones and buried relics of organisms once more live, we appeal to the former to disclose the nature and constitution of the earth's framework whereon they flourished. It is therefore only just that our Society should seek opportunities of acknowledging the aid which we receive from mineralogists; and it would be difficult to find one on whom this Wollaston Medal could be more fitly conferred than on Prof. Des Cloizeux. To enumerate the papers which he has written would be a formidable task; they numbered 141 so long as fourteen years ago; what, then, must be the present total? I may, however, point in passing to his admirable “Manuel de Mindralogie,” and allude, as more directly bearing on the work of this Society, to his papers on the classification of hyperites and euphotides, on the geysers of Iceland, on the action of heat upon the position of the optic axes in a mineral, and the numerous memoirs on the distinction of minerals by their optical properties, especially those relating to microcline, and to other species of feldspar, of the importance of which students of microscopic petrology are daily more sensible. I esteem it a great honour to be the means of carrying into effect the award of the Council by placing in your hands, to be transmitted to Prof. Des Cloizeaux, the Wollaston Medal, founded “to promote researches concerning the mineral structure of the earth.”—The President then presented the balance of the proceeds of the 'Tollaston Donation Fund to Mr. J. Starkie Gardner, F.G.S., and addressed him as follows:—Mr. Starkie Gardner, The small number of students and the paucity of memoirs seems to indicate that fossil botany is one of those subjects of which the difficulties repel rather than fascinate the neophyte. If these are in some respects less formidable in the plant-remains of the earlier Tertiary period, if in studying them, recent research throws some light on fossil botany, yet the practical difficulties of obtaining, developing, and preserving specimens are so great that no little ardour and patience are demanded from one who devotes himself to the subject. For years this has been your special work: after thoroughly exploring the flora of the ttocene Tertiaries on the coast of Hampshire and in the Isle of Night, you are now, and have for some time been, engaged in communicating to us the fruits of your labours through the medium of the Palseontographical Society, thereby earning the thanks of students. Your researches also of late years have been extended to Antrim, Mull, and even Iceland, and their results cannot fail to be of the highest interest in rega-d to the age of these floras, and their relation to those which occur in the H ampshire district. In recognition of past, and in aid of future, work the Council has awarded to you the balance of the Wollaston Fund, which I have much pleasure in handing to you.—The President next presented the Murchison Medal to Mr. William Whitaker, B.A., F.G.S., and addressed him as follows:—Mr. William Whitaker, To many members of the Geological Survey of Great Britain since the date of its constitution we are indebted for work freely done-beyond the sphere of their more strictly professional duties. Its chiefs, from the days of Sir H. de la Beche to the present distinguished Director-General, Dr. A. Geikie, have been among the most valued contributors to our journal, and have enriched geological literature by their longer writings while among its other members, few have done more than yourself in following the example of its leaderc On the present occasion I will only allude to the various memoirs of the Geological Survey, especially that on the London Basin, in which you have taken so large and important a share, and will dwell rather on your contributions to our own journal and to other publications. Your papers on the western end of the London Basin and on the Lower London Tertiaries of Kent deserve to be ranked with the classic memoirs of Prestwich as elucidating the geology of what I may call the Home District; and your last contribution to its deep-seated geology is still too fi-esh in our memories to need more than a mention. We do not forget your varied and valuable contributions to the Geological Magazine, especially those on the Red Chalk of Norfolk, on the watersupply from the Chalk, on the formation of the Chesil Bank (written jointly with Mr. Bristow), a paper, as it seems to me, of remarkable suggestiveness; and last, but by no means least, on sub-aërial denudation, in which, as remarked by the late Mr. C. Darwin, you had “the good fortune to bring conviction to the minds” of your fellow-workers by means of “a single memoir.” We are also greatly indebted to you for your labours in reference to the history of the literature of geology, a task involving not a little labour, which, though of the greatest value to students, is to all unremunerative, and would be, to many, exceptionally toilsome. Of this, your care for several years of the Geological Record, and the lists of books and memoirs relating to the geology of various counties in England, are conspicuous instances. There is a peculiar appropriateness in the award to you of this medal, founded by Sir Roderick Murchison, one of the illustrious chiefs of your Survey, and I have the greatest pleasure, on behalf of the Council of the Geological Society, in placing it in your hands, together with the customary grant from the Fund.—In presenting the balance of the proceeds ofthe Murchison GeologicalFund to Mr. Clement Reid, F.G.S., the President said:—Mr. Clement Reid,—The later Pliocene and the Pleistocene deposits of East Anglia offer to geologists a series of problems as difficult as they are attractive. We are indebted to you for much valuable information on the exact distribution and the fossil contents of these varied deposits, which owing to peculiar local circumstances often present exceptional difficulties, and demand exceptionally patient study on the part of the investigators. Your memoir on the Forest Bed of Norfolk is a contribution ofespecial value to students as affording them fuller and more precise information than could previously be obtained, while the pages of our journal and of the Geological Magazine testify to the zeal and thoroughness with which you have applied yourself to these and kindred questions. In conferring upon you this award from the Murchison Fund, which I have great pleasure in placing in your hands, the Council of the Geological Society hopes that it may aid you in prosecuting your studies in this department of geology and extending them to localities which could not be visited by you in the discharge of your professional duties as a Member of the Geological Survey of Great Britain.—The President next presented the Lyell Medal to Mr. William Pengelly, F.R.S., F.G.S., and addressed him as follows:—Mr. Pengelly,—The Council of the Geological Society has awarded you the Lyell Medal and a sum of twenty guineas from the Fund in recognition of your lifelong labours in the cause of geology, and more especially, of your investigations in those caverns of the south-west of England by means of which our knowledge of the condition of Britain during the latest epoch of geological history has been so largely augmented. To exhume the contents of a cavern, not only the lair of wild beasts, but also an abode of men in those ages when, to quote the words of the old Greek tragedian, —“Like tiny ants they dwelt in sunless caves,”1 requires the exercise of unwearied patience and, in addition, of extensive knowledge and critical acumen. By the labours of the Committee, of which you were the hands and the eyes, and at least a fair proportion of the compound brain, Mr. MacEnery's long-neglected discovery in Kent's Hole was placed beyond all dispute, and the contents of that cavern, its succession of deposits, its relics of extinct animals, and its tools of stone and bone, denoting more than one stage of civilisation, have been made known to the world. In like way the virgin ground of the Brixham cave was investigated, and its valuable contents have been rendered accessible to students. All this you have done, not as the fruit of secured leisure, but in the intervals of a busy life, of which, in the full sense of the words, time was money; and you began this work at a period when, owing to mistaken prejudices, you incurred no small risk of obloquy and personal loss. Your work at Bovey Tracey and your papers on the later geology of Devonshire and Cornwall are too well known to need more than a passing allusion; the Torquay Museum and the Transactions of the local societies will be a lasting monument of your zeal in stimulating scientific researches in the neighbourhood of your home. There is a peculiar fitness in the award to you of this Medal, a memorial of the fearless and illustrious author of the “Principles of Geology” and of the “Antiquity of Man.” I esteem myself exceptionally fortunate in being commissioned to place it in your hands, and being thus enabled to testify my regard for so valued and genial a friend. -In handing the balance of the proceeds of the Lyell Donation Fund to Dr. Henry Woodward, F.R.S., F.G.S., for transmission to Mr. D. Mackintosh, F. G. S., the President addressed him as follows:—Dr. Woodward,—I have much pleasure in placing in your hands, as representing Mr. Mackintosh, the balance of the Lyell Donation Fund awarded to him by the Council of the Geological Society. In him we have a second instance of the way in which, through an untiring zeal for science, the rare intervals of a hard-worked life may bear fruit so largely augmenting the common stock of geological knowledge. There are few problems more interesting than that of the physical condition of our native land during the period commonly designated the Glacial epoch; but for its solution an exact knowledge of the distribution of erratics and an identification of their points of departure is absolutely necessary. Those who, like myself, have attempted to adjust the rival claims of glacier and floe, of the ice-chariot versus the ice-ship, as vehicles of boulder-transport, can hardly speak too highly of the value of the papers on British erratics which he has contributed to our journal and to other publications. I trust that this award may not only be gratifying to him as a mark of our appreciation, but also help him in continuing his labours in a field where, notwithstanding them, much still remains to be done.—The President then handed the award from the Barlow-Jameson Fund to Dr. W. T. Blanford, F.R.S., fortransmission to Dr. H. J. Johnston-Lavis, F.G. S., and addressed him as follows:—Dr. Blanford, I will ask you to transmit this award to Mr. Johnston-Lavis. In this country happily the volcanic fires have long ceased to glow, and the earthquake seldom causes more than a transient tremor. It is otherwise on the shores of the Bay of Naples, where again and again during the last eighteen centuries Vesuvius has rained down ruin; and of late years the earthquakes of Ischia have wrought destruction on the works, and desolation in the homes, of men. It is true that these phenomena of the darker side of nature have not been unobserved by the many illustrious men of science to whom Italy has given birth; but “the curse of Babel” has debarred some of us from access to their works. This alone gives an exceptional value to the elaborate studies which Mr. Johnston-Lavis has undertaken of the various eruptive products of Vesuvius and of the Ischian earthquakes. There is yet another advantage, that natural phenomena should be studied by men of different nations, diverse training, and varied habits of mind. In recognition of his past labours and in furtherance of future work in the vicinity of Naples, the Council has awarded to him a grant from the Barlow-Jameson Fund, which I have much pleasure in placing in your hands.—The President then read his Anniversary Address, in which, after giving obituary notices of some of the Members lost by the Society during the year 1885, he referred to the principal contributions to geological knowledge which have been made during the past year, both in the publications of the Society and elsewhere in Britain. The remainderofthe addresswas devoted to a discussion ofthe principles of nomenclature which should be followed in regard to the metamorphic rocks. After describing the nature and relations of the various metamorphic rocks in certain parts of the Alps, Canada, Scotland, &c., the effects of the intrusion of igneous rocks, and the results of pressure in producing changes, both mechanical and chemical, upon rocks originally crystalline, he pointed out that these last could generally be distinguished from anterior foliation, otherwise produced; that many rocks in the metamorphic series appear to have originated in stratified de posits, but that the evidence at present in our possession pointed to the very great antiquity of all these, and to the probability of their having been produced under conditions which have not recurred since the beginning of the Palteozoic period.—The ballot for the Council and Officers was taken, and the following were duly elected for the ensui,ng year:—President: Prof. J. W. J udd, F. R. S.; Vice-Presidents: H. Bauerman, John Evans, F.R.S., A. Geikie, F.R.S., and J. A. Phillips, F.R.S'; Secretaries: W. T. Blanford, F.R. S., and W. H. Hudleston, F.R.S.; Foreign Secretary: Warington W. Smyth, F. R. S. Treasurer: Prof. T. Wiltshire, F. L. S.; Council: H. Bauerman, W. T. Blanford, F.R.S., Prof. T. G. Bonney, F.R.S., Thomas Davies, Prof. P. Martin Duncan, F.R.S., John Evans, F.R.S., A. Geikie, F.R.S., Henry Hicks, F.R.S., G. J. Hinde, Ph.D., J. Hopkinson, W. H. Hudleston, F.R.S., Prof. T. M'Kenny Hughes, MA., Prof. T. Rupert Jones, F.R.S., Prof. J. W. Judd, F.R.S., R. Lydekker, BA., J. F. Marr, MA., J. A. Phillips, F.R.S., Prof. H. G. Seeley, F.R.S., Warington W. Smyth, F.R.S., J. J. H. Teall, MA., W. Topley, Prof. T. Wiltshire, F.L.S., Henry Woodward, F.R.S.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Societies and Academies . Nature 33, 502–504 (1886). https://doi.org/10.1038/033502a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/033502a0