98 SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF YORK AND DISTRICT 



In 1 83 1 it was thus described : ' The collections of natural history are 

 distributed in five apartments, the three largest of which are arranged 

 round the lecture-room and lighted from above. In one of these are the 

 cabinets of minerals, in another a suite of 12,000 geological specimens 

 disposed in the order of the strata, and the third contains collections in 

 the various departments of zoology. The lecture-room aflFords seats for 

 300 persons.' Roman and other antiquities were also exhibited, and 

 there were a library and a laboratory. 



The creation of an institution of this nature in ten years was evidence of 

 successful organisation, and the Council of the Society, in acting upon 

 Brewster's proposal, did so promptly and efficiently. And enthusiasm 

 for science in Yorkshire was not confined to its capital, for when the 

 Committee of Management set to work to circularise all the scientific 

 institutions known to them concerning the proposed meeting, they dis- 

 covered thirteen in London and twenty-six in the rest of the country, of 

 which nine were in Yorkshire — a laudable proportion. 



Here, then, in the premises of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, the 

 British Association was brought to birth on September 26, 1831, and 

 continued its meetings on following days. More than that, it annexed 

 the existing officers of the Society as its own. The first President of the 

 Association was the President of the Society, Viscount Milton, afterwards 

 third Earl Fitzwilliam. The first Vice-President, William Vernon 

 Harcourt, the treasurer, Jonathan Gray, the secretaries, John Phillips and 

 William Gray,^ held those offices respectively in the Yorkshire Society. 

 To two of them, Harcourt and Phillips, our grateful remembrances are 

 especially due to-day. 



William Vernon, born in 1789, was a son of the then Archbishop of 

 York. The family assumed the name of Harcourt when the archbishop 

 succeeded to the famous Harcourt estate of Nuneham, near Oxford. 

 William Vernon Harcourt was destined for the navy, and served as a mid- 

 shipman, but left the service to take holy orders, and became a Canon of 

 York in 1824. He was also a man of high scientific attainments at a 

 period when these were still a not uncommon accompaniment of dis- 

 tinction in the Church. He was initiated into the study of chemistry by 

 Isaac Milner, Dean of Carlisle, who also was successively Professor of 

 Chemistry and of Mathematics in the University of Oxford. Harcourt 

 was intimate with Wollaston and Humphrey Davy, and imbibed an interest 

 in geology from Buckland. He maintained his own chemical laboratory, 

 and carried out researches in such subjects as the long-continued action of 

 heat on minerals, and the refractive power of variously compounded 

 glasses. To his scientific accomplishments there was added administra- 

 tive ability of no mean order. He took a leading part in the working of 

 various important philanthropical institutions in York ; and as for the 

 British Association, he was from the first its chief organiser and law-giver. 

 He subsequently was one of its honorary general secretaries for several 

 years, and its President in 1839. It was Harcourt who at the first meeting 

 of the Association in York took the lead in formulating the objects of the 



^ These two held the office corresponding to the present local secretaryship ; 

 Phillips was subsequently appointed Secretary of the Association. 



