Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 26.djvu/49



Reports of the Council and of the Committees and Auditors having been read, the President, Professor, LL.D., F.R.S., handed the Wollaston Gold Medal to , Esq., F.R.S., for transmission to , addressing him as follows:—

I request you to transmit the Wollaston Medal for this year to M. Deshayes as an expression on the part of the Geological Society of the high estimation in which his services to Palæontology and Geology, especially in regard to the classification of the Tertiary formation, are held by the geologists of this country.

Six years ago the Council of this Society demonstrated the interest which it took in M. Deshayes's valuable investigations by awarding him the Donation-fund. Now that those researches, commenced just fifty years ago, are completed, and the labours of a life devoted to science are crowned by the publication of five great volumes containing descriptions and figures of all the Mollusca of the Paris basin, it has seemed to the Council a fitting opportunity for bestowing the highest honour at its disposal upon the pupil, editor, and continuator of Lamarck, and the worthy successor of his great master in the Chair of Natural History in the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle.

Mr. read the following reply on behalf of Prof., F.R.S., the Foreign Secretary of the Society, who was unavoidably absent:—

I have the honour to acknowledge, on the part of M. Deshayes, the award of the Wollaston Medal; and in forwarding to him this mark of the estimation in which his labours are held among English geologists, I will not fail to communicate the observations you, Sir, as representing the Society, have thought fit to express.

It is much to be regretted that M. Deshayes is not present in person to receive this Medal, and assure you of the extent to which he appreciates it. On three occasions, the first no less than thirty- four years ago, he received the award of the proceeds of the Wollaston Donation-fund to assist him in those long-continued researches of which we have lately received the completion, in the publication of the last volume of the work with which his name will always be connected. Placed in a district rich in an extraordinary degree in fossils of one geological period, he has devoted himself to the study