If some of my theories, induced by that work, were long in being recognized, the recognition has been all the more welcome when it came. Probably I never should have been able to do what I have done but for the wise example of my old master Sir Henry himself, in his time the best thinker in England on the physical branch of our science, and to whose remarkable work, ' Researches in Theoretical Geology,' all geologists are to this day indebted.
The papers which I have written are mere offshoots from my heavier work on the Geological Survey. Perhaps they are enough for the readers ; but I wish they had been more numerous, for I certainly have had many more in my mind. Two of these, on old physical geographies, I have lately given to the Society ; and if they should be printed, I shall be well pleased should they soon or late be found worthy. The present physical geography of the world is but the sequel of older physical geographies ; and to make out the history of these is one of the ultimate aims of geology. These are the subjects I have striven to master in part. I consider your award a sign that I have had some success ; and if, before I cease to work, I have a little more, I may well be content.
Award of the Wollaston Donation-fund.
The President then presented the Balance of the Proceeds of the Wollaston Donation-fund to Robert Etheridge, Esq., F.G.S., in aid of the publication of his great stratigraphical Catalogue of British Fossils, and addressed him as follows : —
Mr. Etheridge, — The Council of the Society has awarded to you the Proceeds of the Wollaston Fund, to aid in prosecuting your valuable work on the fossils of the British Islands, stratigraphically arranged. In this work, on which you have been engaged during the last nine years, and which occupies nine volumes of MS., representing as many geological groups, you give the natural-history lists of each group, and trace the history of each species both in time and space. Of the magnitude of the work few can have any idea ; nor would many have an idea of the marvellous extent of past life in our small portion of the globe without a comparison of our recent fauna with those (necessarily incomplete because only partly accessible) which you have enumerated in your most useful lists. This comparison shows : —
