THE COUNCIL. 9 



" The Yorkshire Philosophical Society may hope to make its 

 library the depository of such records. It counts among its mem- 

 bers many who, residing in different parts of the county, might 

 with little trouble collect and transmit to the Museum much cu- 

 rious and valuable information respecting the past and present 

 state of their neighbourhood, and thus accumulate a treasure of 

 inestimable worth, in which topographers in time to come may 

 find laid up for their use what they would otherwise be com- 

 pelled to search for at the cost of much time and labour, and 

 for which, perhaps, they might search in vain, when time, and 

 accident, and innovation have made havoc of the existing mo- 

 numents of antiquity, and the remembrance of that which is 

 now famihar has been worn away." 



The Curator proposes that an extensive application shall be 

 made to individuals, for accounts of their own immediate vi- 

 cinity ; and for this purpose a list of minute and well-considered 

 queries has been drawn up by that able topographer,^ the his- 

 torian of Hallamshire, and of the Deanery of Doncaster, who 

 states that the " value of the information which will be obtained, 

 whenever these queries fall into the hands of a gentleman who is 

 disposed to bestow on them the easy labour which the answers 

 will require, would be highly appreciated by any one who had at- 

 tempted to describe a considerable extent of country, and who 

 must have found that it is often easier to collect accounts of what 

 passed two or three centuries ago, than of the occurrences of the 

 century preceding our own." By employing these means, and by 

 referring, where it may be practicable, to documentary evidence 

 in order to verify the oral information obtained, it is hoped that 

 materials may by degrees be collected for the history of that 

 large portion of this county which remains yet undescribed, and 

 also for the future continuation of the history of those districts 

 which have been of late so amply and so satisfactorily illustrated. 



' The Rev. Joseph Hunter. 



