FIRST MEETING 15 



under the guidance of keen officers, who took up 

 his proposals warmly. Harcourt and Phillips 

 moved the council of the Yorkshire Philosophical 

 Society to approach the Corporation of the City 

 of York, with the result that the town clerk wrote 

 to Phillips (March 9, 1831) that the Lord Mayor 

 and some others of the magistrates 'would have 

 great pleasure in doing everything that lies in 

 their power to promote the objects of the Society 

 mentioned by Dr. Brewster, and they rejoice that 

 York is fixed upon as the place for holding its 

 meeting.' The subsequent correspondence which 

 survives, relating to the preliminary organisation 

 of the meeting, is almost wholly between Phillips 

 and John Eobison, but James Johnston, who, as 

 we have seen, was acquainted through personal 

 experience with the working of the German asso- 

 ciation, took a hand, bringing forward various sugges- 

 tions based upon the practices of that body, which 

 he evidently admired. 



THE FIRST MEETING : YORK, 1831 



The mother-society of the British Association 

 is the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, for it was 

 in the name of the council of that body that the 

 first public circular calling attention to the proposed 

 meeting ' of the Friends of Science ' was issued 

 (July 12, 1831) to other societies and to individual 

 ' cultivators and promoters of science/ A com- 

 mittee of management was formed in York with 

 Harcourt as chairman and Phillips as secretary, and 

 ' the first general meeting took place on the evening 

 of Monday the 26th of September [1831]. It was a 



