229 YORKSHIRE NATURALISTS UNION — ANNUAL MEETING. 1 3 



F.G.S., F.L.S., F.S.A., Mayor of Halifax, and an old and prominent 

 member of the Union, 



The minutes of the previous annual meeting having been printed 

 and circulated were taken as read, as was also the Annual Report 

 which appears on pages 219-223 of 'The Naturalist.' 



The excursion-programme for 1891 having been announced to 

 the meeting, the Chairman called upon the Right Rev. W. W. How, 

 D.D., Lord Bishop of Wakefield, to deliver the Annual Presidential 

 Address, entitled ' The Study of Natural Science.' 



The Bishop, who had a cordial reception, said he had not for 

 years been able to do anything in scientific studies, except of a 

 most casual and superficial character. But his interest in scientific 

 matters could never, he thought, decline. He thought they had 

 learnt in these latter days that a patient collection of facts was a 

 key which opened the gate of all new avenues of discovery, and 

 of all enlargements of their area of knowledge. Of course very 

 few single minds could combine powers of minute observation, of 

 •delicate comparison, of intuitive recognition of the true bearing of 

 phenomena, with a large grasp of general principles, and a profound 

 skill in fitting all details into the great theories which characterised 

 a Darwin. Darwin seemed to combine all the powers which could 

 contribute to the advancement of science. He was a thinker, 

 and a collector of facts — he was, indeed, he supposed, one of the 

 most splendidly-equipped minds for the prosecution of natural 

 science which one could conceive of But though few could 

 combine all those various powers, a very great number could 

 contribute something to the advancement of natural science. As 

 an illustration of this point, the Bishop mentioned the splendid 

 astronomical discoveries at the beginning of the seventeenth 

 century. Tycho in Denmark, Kepler in Germany, and Galileo in 

 Italy, working each in his own way to accomplish results which 

 were to shake the world. No one of these could have won the 

 :splendid triumphs which were achieved without the other two. 

 He urged the members of this Union to learn the habit of 

 accurate observation, and to record carefully what they observed- 

 Take, for example, botany — say a plant new to the region where it 

 was found, such as the Aretiaria gothica, discovered at Ribblehead 

 last year. This meant not only an interesting find, but a contribu- 

 tion to far larger fields of inquiry, such as the distribution of the 

 flora throughout the world, the modes and causes of that distribution, 

 the changes in the surface of the earth, and the like. So, whatever 

 branch of science they undertook, let them gather facts, be accurate, 

 and record carefully. But as a Bishop, with a charge of the 



August 1891. 



