REPORT 



THE COUNCIL. 



The Council cannot lay before the Annual Meeting the 

 Report of the proceedings and state of the Yorkshire Philoso- 

 phical Society, during the past year, without reminding the 

 Members that the Institution has now reached the end of the 

 tenth year of its existence ; and offering their congratulations 

 on the satisfactory and increasing success which, during that 

 period, has marked its progress. Founded under very en- 

 couraging auspices, and receiving from its commencement the 

 prompt and liberal support of the friends and patrons of science, 

 in almost every part of the county, and even beyond its ex- 

 tended limits, the most confident expectations that it would 

 eventually attain to eminence among the scientific institutions of 

 Great Britain were, not unreasonably, formed and cherished. 

 But the most sanguine of its earliest friends, who witnessed its 

 origin in the union of three private collections from the ante- 

 diluvian reUcs of Kirkdale Cave, could scarcely have imagined 

 that, in the space of ten short years, there would be gathered 

 around that small cabinet so great a multitude of rare, costly, 

 and interesting specimens in almost every branch of Natural 

 History, as that which now adorns the ample rooms of the 

 Museum. The retrospect is highly gratifying, not only as 

 furnishing undoubted evidence of the public approbation of 

 the views contemplated by the Society, and of a growing 



