REPORT OF THE COUNCIL 



OF THE 



YORKSHIRE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, 



Feb. 5, 1856. 



In presenting to the Annual Meeting the Report for the 

 past year, the Council will first relate the ordinary operations 

 of the Society, and then advert to the results of some important 

 changes in its Laws, which have been carried into eflfect within 

 the year. 



Numerous and valuable additions have been made during 

 the past year to the Natural History Collections, both by 

 donation and by exchange. Mr. Joseph Clark, of Cincinnati, 

 who seldom allows a twelvemonth to pass without some proof 

 of the interest which he takes in the progress of the Society's 

 Collections, has sent various American fossils and recent fresh- 

 water shells, in extension of the beautiful series of specimens 

 given by him in former years. A cast of the celebrated 

 Plesiosaurus Macrocephalus belonging to the Earl of Ennis- 

 killen, has been received from the Hull Philosophical Society 

 in exchange for a duplicate specimen of the skull and horns of the 

 extinct Irish Deer. The Committee of the York Medical School 

 have presented a very perfect specimen of the skull of the Bos 

 longifrons of Owen, found in digging a canal near Pocklington ; 

 and Mr. Sharpin, a portion of the thigh bone of the Deinornis, 

 or great extinct wingless bird of New Zealand — a valuable addi- 

 tion to the casts of bones of this bird, previously presented by 

 the Council of the College of Surgeons. From H. P. Cholmeley, 



